


Breaking the Game

by pennypaperbrain



Category: Yami No Matsuei
Genre: Aftercare, Angst, BDSM, Beating, Bondage, Established Relationship, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-10-24
Updated: 2011-10-24
Packaged: 2017-10-24 22:19:50
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 9
Words: 39,110
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/268506
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pennypaperbrain/pseuds/pennypaperbrain
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Tsuzuki decides the low-stakes emotional game he’s been playing with Tatsumi since their partnership ended is no longer enough.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this fic in 2003-4, partly as a way of sorting my head out regarding my own kinks. I came back to it cautiously in 2011 and found... it's not too bad. Some bits work very well, even if a few don't. I've resisted the temptation to tamper. As much as piece of fiction it's an exploration of ideas, and sometimes those actually work better with flaws.
> 
> Disclaimer: Breaking the Game should not be taken as a bdsm manual. a) The characters are supernatural, with exaggerated pain tolerance and b) I didn't start actually practising bdsm until some way into writing the fic, so I was doing my best with sketchy knowledge.

It had been another eventful month for the Kyushu two, and once again Shokan division secretary Tatsumi Seiichirou was having to deal with the administrative fallout.  
As usual, it was taking some time. He’d finally cornered inveterate paperwork-dodger Tsuzuki Asato, but rather than a wallet of completed forms, all Tatsumi had got was a big-eyed plea for help with filling them in. Now Tsuzuki was sitting, or rather sprawling, in the swivel chair in front of Tatsumi’s desk, still looking mournful. His tie was all but undone.  
Tatsumi sighed and gave his colleague a stern look through his glasses, making sure to angle them in the electric light so they would glint in a suitably cold fashion. Office hours were already over and he’d sent Kurosaki-kun home. Whine and drag his feet as he might, its was Tsuzuki’s shikigami who had fried a row of buildings last week and so it was Tsuzuki who had to fill in the documentation.  
“You have to do this, it won’t take long,” Tatsumi coaxed, not wanting to be too hard on his colleague. He’d gathered from Hisoka’s brief comments – apparently diffident but in reality all too expressive, and accompanied by significant glances at his partner from under his bangs – that today Tsuzuki had once again been forced to take the life of someone who really didn’t want to die. Tatsumi could have looked into the details of the case, discovered whether it was another child, or perhaps someone in love... but there was no point getting dragged into Tsuzuki’s pain again. Tatsumi knew by now there was nothing he could really do for his former partner - except for practical things, like making him fill in his paperwork properly and so keeping off unwanted scrutiny from the higher-ups.  
“I feel like I’m in detention,” Tsuzuki complained, shuffling his feet as he sat in the chair in front of Tatsumi’s desk. “I’ve been summoned to see the headmaster.”  
Tatsumi could feel himself getting irritated. He still had plenty of his own work to do tonight and did not need this delay.  
“Be sensible, Tsuzuki,” he snapped, leaning further over his desk and jabbing at something on the form which waited in front of his unmoving colleague. “This isn’t exactly the first time you’ve done this. You really should be able to fill in the paperwork by yourself now.”  
Tatsumi sat heavily back in his chair, glaring. But Tsuzuki wasn’t looking at him. He was staring downwards.  
Tatsumi wondered for a worried second whether Tsuzuki might be focusing on his right wrist. Although they were invisible under his watch strap, those scars could sometimes seem the centre of the shinigami’s whole body.  
Not this time though. Tsuzuki simply looked sad and vacant. He was staring through his hands, through the floor, off into worlds Tatsumi could not reach. He made a slight movement, and untidy brown hair flopped over to obscure his face.  
“Tsuzuki...” said Tatsumi gently.  
“Hm?” The younger shinigami glanced up and gave his colleague a bright smile.  
Tsuzuki was going to hide everything again, then. Well, so be it. Probably for the best.  
“It’s no good,” said Tatsumi, smiling wryly and wagging a finger over his desk. “You’re not going to get out of this.”  
Tsuzuki pouted. “Are you _sure_ you can’t do it for me?”  
“I may be clever, but I can’t fake handwriting. I don’t think I could write so untidily,” Tatsumi added, adopting a fastidious expression as Tsuzuki took up the pen he had provided and filled in the first box at the top of the form.  
“Sorry,” said Tsuzuki, smiling cheerfully. “What can I say, education wasn’t big when I was a kid.... Oh. Oops.”  
Tatsumi looked down at the form and once again felt his composure slipping slightly. Tsuzuki had actually managed to break the apparently indestructible modern-style pen. Ink dribbled across the form and onto the desk.  
The secretary got up, swiped the form from under Tsuzuki’s nose, stuffed it into the bin and went to get another from the filing cabinet.  
Behind him, he could hear Tsuzuki get up as well. It sounded like one of his desk drawers was being opened.  
“What are you doing?” Tatsumi inquired neutrally as he turned round, not sure if he was supposed to play this latest move indulgently or angrily.  
Tsuzuki had picked up the bamboo pointer which Tatsumi used for his occasional lectures and accounting presentations.  
Tatsumi frowned.  
“I think you’re going to have to punish me,” said Tsuzuki, with an odd little smile.  
After a second Tatsumi’s instincts for their old game kicked back in. He began to make a dry comment about the teacher’s desk being off limits, tapping the corner of some forms on the metal edge of the filing cabinet. But his voice trailed off when he saw Tsuzuki’s hand was shaking.  
Tatsumi stuffed the sheaf of paper back into its folder and hurried back towards his desk, stopping little more than a foot in front of Tsuzuki.  
“What is it? What’s the matter?” The secretary heard his own voice low and urgent, sounding more worried than the rules of their exchange should have allowed. He caught himself well before his hand could move up to touch skin against skin.  
Tsuzuki’s expression was unreadable as he offered the cane to Tatsumi. The secretary took it automatically, telling himself how baffling this was. What silliness was Tsuzuki indulging in now?  
 _Tatsumi..._  
He seemed to hear his name without Tsuzuki speaking it, and suddenly fingertips were burning through the thin sleeve of his shirt.  
Tatsumi jumped back, scraping his shin on the desk. He leant down to rub it with his free hand and made the usual comforting expressions of annoyance and concern for the fabric of his trousers. When he looked up, he was certain all this... strangeness would have gone away.  
Tsuzuki was still looking at him. With something like anger – and disappointment. His posture had changed from the exaggeratedly coy, pleading pose of their familiar game to something straighter, more virile and angry. One foot, in a poorly polished shoe, was twitching against Tatsumi’s immaculate carpet.  
“Don’t, then,” growled Tsuzuki. “Never mind. I should know by now I can’t really expect anything from you. Now, as you’ve decided I’m stuck here until midnight, what would you like me to do? Alphabetise some filing, or maybe count paperclips?”  
“Don’t be ridiculous,” Tatsumi shot back. “Tsuzuki-san, you haven’t...”  
But Tsuzuki had turned around and was moving away. Tatsumi came up behind the shorter man in two long strides and caught his shoulder in a firm grasp.  
Tsuzuki instantly went perfectly still.  
“You haven’t...” Tatsumi began again, feeling a strange current running up through his hand and seeming to paralyse his brain. “You haven’t... the forms...”  
The muscles clasped between his thumb and fingers bunched and shifted. Then he was holding air, and Tsuzuki was facing him, very close.  
Amethyst eyes, filled with that expression which Tatsumi did not – refused to – understand.  
Tatsumi sensed rather than saw another movement. He looked down to see that Tsuzuki had brought his hand up between them, and was holding it there, palm up, just a few centimetres from Tatsumi’s navel.  
“What _do_ you expect from me, Tsuzuki Asato?” Tatsumi heard himself half-whisper.  
Tsuzuki just kept staring. That awful, limitless stare that opened right into the agony at the heart of the man.  
“Perhaps we should...” Tatsumi began to murmur, but cut himself short by bringing the cane down hard on the naked skin in front of him.  
There hadn’t been enough room for a proper swing, but Tatsumi had put force into the blow. Tsuzuki let out a thin screech and clasped his injured hand under his arm, eyes clenching shut, body hunching in on itself.  
Instantly Tatsumi was angry. Of course he was, that was why he had hit Tsuzuki. He stared at the cane, which had raised itself back to shoulder level for convenient inspection as if it were guiding Tatsumi’s hand rather than the other way round. Eyeballing his bamboo pointer, as if it might provide some explanation for all this, seemed so much better than remembering Tsuzuki at the moment.  
Then Tsuzuki let out a pitiful little whimper of the kind guaranteed to make Tatsumi jump to attention even if they were in an expenditure meeting. Tatsumi dropped the cane on the desk, and instinctively stepped right up to his former partner, so close he could smell cinnamon rolls... and below that, something else.  
He registered the sensation of Tsuzuki’s uninjured hand snaking around his waist as the shorter man opened his eyes and looked up into Tatsumi’s face.  
“So you like it when I’m a naughty boy,” murmured Tsuzuki. “Should have tried that before.”  
Tatsumi closed his eyes, deciding to ignore the arm resting on the band of his trousers. Tsuzuki had pushed the game too far, he wasn’t interested any more. Damage limitation was the job now. “Show me your hand,” he said. Guilt and self-reproach could wait, he had to check Tsuzuki was recovering. He gently gripped Tsuzuki’s elbow and began to tug the hand free of its protecting armpit.  
Tsuzuki, for some insane reason, was resisting. One part of Tatsumi experienced the sudden urge to give a Hisoka-style growl of “idiot!” and exit the room in disgust. Instead he commanded, more sternly this time. “Show me your hand!”  
“You might have trouble seeing it like that,” murmured Tsuzuki. But he relaxed and allowed his hand to be guided out of its refuge.  
Tatsumi had to open his eyes to inspect the wounded palm. He just had time to register that the welt was unpleasant but already healing in the shinigami fashion, when the hand rose up and vanished from sight as it clamped softly around the lower half of his face.  
Tatsumi opened his mouth to protest, but his lips met with skin. His tongue came out to meet the raised hump of the already smooth welt, and to lick it once, twice, feeling the tiny shifts of contour as the wound healed even while he worked.  
Tsuzuki had let go of his waist. Their only point of contact, the only thing that existed in the world, was the heat of the shinigami’s fingertips on Tatsumi’s face, and the mending flesh that was tender and firm against his tongue.  
In the distance there was a tiny sound, perhaps the building creaking as it settled into emptiness for the night.  
For the second time, Tatsumi flinched backwards.  
His tie flipped up and almost hit him in the face, which was comical, he noted with complete detachment. In front of him, Tsuzuki was leaning one-handed against his chair, back gently arched and eyes tight shut in what appeared to be rapture. His injured hand remained in the air where... where Tatsumi’s mouth had been.  
Tsuzuki presumably moved out of that position, but Tatsumi did not see it happen, because by that time he had both his own hands flat on his desk, head down. He was trying not to pant.  
The grain of the wood was fascinating. Some of the ink Tsuzuki had spilled had settled into one of the grooves. _Must get that removed,_ Tatsumi thought, with a tiny thrill of efficiency.  
Then he stated, as if it were the next order of business after the ink spill, “I am a monster, Tsuzuki-san. I killed my own mother, you know that. Do not entrust yourself to me.”  
Someone else was saying this. His mouth had been borrowed, as his arm with the cane had been before. All this, everything, was beyond comprehension. An evening of paperwork, that had been all that was needed. Nothing else. Too late.  
“I didn’t...” he heard Tsuzuki begin in a tone of quiet, disappointed defeat. A pause. “Tatsumi? Oh gods, I’ve hurt you, haven’t I.”  
 _Tsuzuki_ had hurt _him?!_  
Tatsumi wanted to whirl round and gather Tsuzuki up in his arms, but he didn’t deserve that relief, couldn’t trust himself with it. Tsuzuki had to get out of here _now_ , for his own sake.  
“Go,” Tatsumi managed to spit out. The patterns in the wood were complex and fascinating.  
“Or you’ll punish...” Tsuzuki began in a weak, joking tone, but trailed off.  
Tatsumi was astonished to see the ink stain blur a little, and spread along the groove. As the desk was moving backwards and forwards slightly, it was also logical to suppose that his arms were shaking.  
“Oh gods,” repeated Tsuzuki. “I’m so sorry, Tatsumi. I’ll go. I’ll go now.”  
Tatsumi wasn’t sure, but he may have felt the faintest ghost of a touch through the back of his shirt. Either way, it was followed by the sounds of a clumsy retreat, footsteps faltering as they nearly fell over a chair before hurrying out into the corridor, then breaking into a run.  
Tatsumi waited for the sound to fade away before he straightened up, staring into the perfect black of his uncurtained office window  
A door slammed in the distance. Beside him the cane rolled off the desk, bounced a little, and was still.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Next day in the office, Hisoka the empath is picking up vibes he would oh so rather not.

“Are you going to tell me what actually happened last night or not?” Hisoka eventually demanded.   
Two hours into the working day and, barriers or no, the welter of Tsuzuki’s emotions was seeping out into the air and interfering with Hisoka’s attempts to read his email.   
And worrying him to distraction, of course, though Hisoka wasn’t about to bring that up. This time he couldn’t even guess at what might be wrong. His first thought had been that Muraki had returned, but Hisoka wasn’t sensing enough revulsion in his partner for that to be likely. Instead he was getting guilt, longing and the echo of a sharp physical pain. Strangest of all, the whole thing was overlaid with sexual desire.  
Ick.   
Hisoka’s least favourite emotion on a list of quite a few.   
Given a choice, he’d have shut himself up like a clam and cleared out to the library. But sitting in front of him was an unhappy Tsuzuki... So Hisoka gritted his teeth and asked casually, in the ‘normal social interaction’ way he’d been practising recently, “What’s wrong with you this morning?”  
Tsuzuki, who was lolling in his chair with a cup of coffee in one hand and a cookie – amazingly still only half-eaten – in the other, smiled sheepishly and gave up all pretence of interest in his computer screen.  
“That obvious, is it?”  
“I don’t need to be an empath, a block of wood could work it out,” Hisoka stared ferociously at his own screen, zipping the mouse about too fast and almost losing a document. “Look, I thought we’d cleared this up after Kyoto. You weren’t going to shut me out any more. Anyway, if you don’t wake up soon, I’m going to go tell Watari he’s got a nice immobile test subject.”  
Hisoka could hear his partner placing the coffee and biscuit carefully on the desk.  
“Sorry, Hisoka. I really must be worrying you if you’d say all that.”  
“Idiot,” growled Hisoka, cursing himself for unable to think of anything more intelligent, and cursing Tsuzuki for being so fucking _right_.  
The older shinigami leant back again, clasping his hands behind his head.   
“I had a row with Tatsumi,” he said.  
Oh gods, that explained the hormones. A lovers’ tiff, with added denial.   
Hisoka felt his cheeks reddening. He’d promised himself he’d be cool about this. He’d had time to get used to the idea, after all. Not long after Hisoka arrived, at some office party, a drunken Watari had inducted Hisoka into the secrets of the birds, the bees and the shinigami. Wakaba and Terazuma. The Hokkaido “sisters”. Watari and anyone willing to wear a certain garment. Konoe and... euw. But primarily Tatsumi and Tsuzuki, a relationship whose component parts sincerely believed it was forty years dead. “It’s... it’s _Wagnerian_ ,” Watari had asserted, waving his arms to indicate the magnitude of his colleagues’ delusion.  
Hisoka had seen the problem close up himself, on the occasions Tatsumi had tried to foist Tsuzuki off onto him. As if a heart the size of Tsuzuki’s was only going to have room for one person.  
Tatsumi’s attempts at self-abnegation had seemed ridiculous at the time, though Hisoka was grateful for the encouragement the older man had given him to take a chance and open himself to Tsuzuki’s friendship. Now however, stuck in a room facing the reality of Tsuzuki’s overwhelming emotions, the possibility of his partner making a choice seemed much more real. Compared to Tsuzuki’s century, Hisoka had such a meagre stock of experience that he just felt a fool.   
It wasn’t the gay thing that bothered him, though that was an extra aspect of strangeness. It was the fact that he didn’t understand what was happening to his friend, and couldn’t compete with it.   
Underneath Hisoka’s responsible concern, a tiny, selfish fear hatched itself: _Tatsumi, don’t take my friend away.  
Damn, I’m a little idiot,_ Hisoka thought miserably. _And I try to tell myself I’m grown-up._  
“What are you thinking?” Tsuzuki asked curiously.  
Hisoka started, hauling himself back from the mental odyssey that had launched itself in his brain in the space of about five seconds.  
“Nothing... Ha. That’ll teach you to dodge paperwork. And I suppose Tatsumi ate you for breakfast?”  
“It was... more complicated than that. We forgot the paperwork.”  
“Tatsumi forgot paperwork?!” Hisoka latched onto this detail. Joking was comfortable.  
Tsuzuki seemed amused, in a sad sort of way. “I’ve known him for forty years, and I’ve discovered there are some things that can make even our secretary drop his documents. He was young once, believe it or not.”  
“I know you’ve known him for forty years,” Hisoka retorted, a little snappishly even for him. “Are you going to tell me what actually happened last night or not?” he demanded. If this was coming, he wanted to get it over with.  
 _Ooh, grown-up talk. Poor little boy, he can’t hack it._  
Hisoka gritted his teeth again, trying to make his face the picture of sensible, compassionate, un-freaked interest.  
“I think you’ve guessed by now.”  
“Yep,” chirped Hisoka nonchalantly. Then he wondered if he’d spoken the word too fast or too slow. Shit, if he was really nonchalant, he wouldn’t be thinking about that. Shit shit shit.  
Tsuzuki had his elbows on the table and his chin on the backs of his folded hands, studying his partner. Gods, the bastard had probably worked out not only that Hisoka was uncomfortable and trying to hide it, but that he was uncomfortable about being uncomfortable, and trying to hide that as well. Exactly who was the empath round here?  
“I’m not trying to freeze you out of my life, I promise,” Tsuzuki assured him before the silence could extend for too long. “If it was just me, it would be OK. But Tatsumi…”  
“Is about as emotionally outgoing as… well, as me.” Hisoka finished the sentence for him.  
Tsuzuki rewarded this admission with a giant, dishevelled grin.   
“You’ve got it,” he nodded, becoming more serious. “Last night, we just… sorted something out between us. I don’t think the problem will come up again. We’ll probably even be on speaking terms again at some point; give it a decade or two.”  
“So the… problem is over?”  
“Yep.”  
Everything about Tsuzuki’s body language and emotional aura contradicted the lightness of his tone, but he kept up that damned grin until he forced acknowledgement from Hisoka.   
As they locked stares, the empath tried to resist the temptation to probe behind that buffering wall of sunny resignation. He truly tried, but his idiot partner, thinking to share a moment of understanding as if Hisoka were a normal person, would look at him in that way, would relax his walls for just a second.  
Hisoka didn’t get much. Just one clear, shocking fact: Tsuzuki had not spent last night making sweet love with Tatsumi, or even having a shouting match.  
Tatsumi had hit him.

“Hisoka, why have you gone so quiet?”  
The question had come, then.   
Hisoka looked at his watch. It was still half an hour until lunch.  
“Because you have,” he growled. “It’s given me a chance to get some work done for once.”  
Or it would have done if Tsuzuki hadn’t been practically suffocating him with hormones.   
“No,” said Tsuzuki a bit sadly. “This isn’t a happy-busy-grumpy Hisoka silence.” He lowered his brows and hunched over in his chair like a gawky teenager – a painfully accurate imitation of the pose Hisoka knew he struck when trying to pretend he wasn’t amused by Tsuzuki’s antics. “It’s a real silence.”  
Hisoka hid behind his computer screen.  
“Please don’t,” said Tsuzuki.   
_Gods,_ thought Hisoka, _at least he’s stopped giving out lust vibes._  
“Didn’t we just have this conversation?” he said. “The one where we say nice things about not shutting each other out?”  
“Yes... So don’t shut me out of whatever you’re angry about.”  
“I’m not angry.” Yes he was, but forget that for now. “I just don’t understand... why you let him hit you.” Hisoka gave up the pretence, sat up straight and stared at Tsuzuki directly, feeling his hurt and confusion blazing out through his red cheeks as well as his empathy. “Did you really think I wouldn’t sense it?”  
Tsuzuki’s face crumpled. “Oh, Hisoka, it wasn’t like that... I didn’t mean you to see...”  
“Then you’d better not partner with an empath! You’ve been broadcasting all morning, are you really still trying to kid yourself it’s over between you two? I may not have a hundred years of experience messing up relationships, but I know hitting someone you love is bad news. Why would Tatsumi do that to you?”  
“Would you believe... because I asked him to?”  
And Tsuzuki’s emotions, even through all the barriers Hisoka had built up for his own sanity, said that this was true.  
“I don’t understand,” said Hisoka simply, fighting the waves of Tsuzuki’s sensations, fighting his fear, fighting the fact that his scars were beginning to itch and burn. Then he took a deep breath. “I want to understand, even if it hurts. Are you willing to show me?”  
A long sigh. “No, Hisoka, I can’t,” came the gentle but terrible words. “If it were just me, yes. But it wouldn’t be fair to Tatsumi. You know how private he is.”  
 _Stupid little boy, he should stay out of grown-ups’ business._  
Tsuzuki hadn’t said this aloud. Tsuzuki would never even think it. It was just true, true, true.   
Kyoto had been an aberration. In fact, it hadn’t even been that. After all, Hisoka had only been able to get the lab key because Muraki’s pimp friend had inexplicably decided to give up in the middle of their fight. He had only survived Touda’s flames because Tatsumi had lifted them out. And it had been Tsuzuki who had made the final decision about whether or not to die. All Hisoka had done was pout and throw tantrums, and other people, grown-ups, had found that cute enough to pay it some fleeting attention. Now things were back to normal.  
The stench of secrets and sex filed the air. Hisoka’s scars flared and burned, reminding him how much he knew of intimacy and how much he couldn’t have, an unborn dream soured into an eternal nightmare.  
 _Tsuzuki stop looking at me with FUCKING pity!_  
Hisoka slammed his chair back, so that the leg hit the wall, jarring his whole body. “I didn’t ask to be mixed up in your stupid mess!” he yelled, jumping up. “You should try living with this!” He slapped his forehead, his resentment of his empathy feeling easy to deal with compared to the ache of the scars and all it represented. “Try playing at privacy then! All right, keep your barriers up – I don’t want to see what’s in there, because I already know what’s going on. You’re still sick, Tsuzuki. It’s no surprise after what Muraki –” a stab of pain at that name. “- did to you. What I can’t believe is that Tatsumi is taking advantage of it.”  
“Hisoka, please,” said Tsuzuki miserably as soon as his partner stopped for breath. “I’ve told you it won’t happen again. Tatsumi made that clear enough.”  
“I have?”  
A voice to their right stopped Hisoka as he was starting on his retort. He faltered, startled into forgetting his pain. He hadn’t felt any kind of emotional presence approaching. And there was only one person in the office who could shield like that.  
“Exactly what have I made clear? And what in Meifu is all this shouting about?”  
Tatsumi.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> 40 years ago, Tatsumi and Tsuzuki became involved...

Tatsumi’s partnership, and relationship, with Tsuzuki had ended over forty years ago.   
There had been three reasons for the split. Number one, the public excuse, was Tsuzuki’s undeniable klutziness. Number two, which Tsuzuki’s close friends were either told or guessed for themselves, was the version Tatsumi had related to Hisoka in the Castle of Candles. But there was also a third reason, the one that Tatsumi had tried to forget, and had hoped Tsuzuki would forget. It had no place in the picture Tatsumi had painted and then stepped into, the one where he was a selfless, sexless guardian watching over Tsu-chan from afar, sacrificing the risks and pleasures of intimacy to protect his dear friend from perverts and demons.  
The end – and perhaps the true beginning – had come on the night they took the life of a little girl whose room was papered from floor to ceiling with drawings of sunny days and smiling families.  
Terrified, she held up her teddy bear as if he could protect her from the angels of death.  
“Quickly,” said Tatsumi, glad that the child’s face was hidden  
Tsuzuki raised his arm, then dropped it again. “Give me a moment,” he murmured.  
“Alright, I’ll do it,” Tatsumi snapped, aching to get this done and be gone. Less than a year on the job and every other assignment turned out this way - Tsuzuki caving in at some crucial moment. He usually recovered in time to do his job, but the suffering he put everyone through was pointless.   
“No. This is _wrong_.” Tsuzuki fisted his hands, keeping his arms rigidly by his sides.  
“Tsuzuki!” Tatsumi hissed, trying to keep his sympathy for the little girl rising in tune with his partner’s. That would serve nobody. “You’re torturing her by making her wait. How does that help her?”  
“Who are you?” came a quavering little voice, and round, terrified brown eyes peeked from behind the bear.  
“I am... the devil,” replied Tsuzuki miserably.  
“Purple eyes,” said the girl, curiosity breaking through her terror as Tsuzuki made no move.  
“Yes. Purple eyes.” Tsuzuki’s voice cracked and his head sagged down.  
Shit, he was going to cry. And Tatsumi could not do this if Tsuzuki cried.   
The child lowered her teddy bear just a little. She’d forgotten Tatsumi, and only had eyes for his partner. “Are you going to –” she began.  
She broke off because Tatsumi had ended it, with a clumsy lash of the shadows he was still learning to control. It was better that way, because she died feeling compassion instead of fear.  
Tsuzuki glanced up in amazement as blood sprayed out and splattered his face and upper body. It only hit Tsuzuki. Always Tsuzuki. Tatsumi looked down at himself, and his suit was still immaculate.   
He was only dirty inside.  
Tsuzuki whimpered and Tatsumi spun away to face the wall.  
“Yes, that foolish person really is crying,” he said after a while, trying to prevent his eyes from focusing on the smiling drawings. “He is supposed to be senior in our partnership, but he is only good as a decoy.”  
Tatsumi heard a series of bumps behind him.  
“Don’t sit down,” he snapped. “We have to leave.”  
“You won’t even look at me,” murmured Tsuzuki.   
Tatsumi balled his own fists, breathed heavily and turned around.  
Tsuzuki was collapsed against the bed, his shirt open as if he had tried to take it off and clean himself, but run out of energy. The decapitated head of the teddy bear was lying in his lap. There was blood in his hair, even, and tears glistening between the crimson tracks on his pale skin. Suffering so pointlessly. So far beyond Tatsumi’s ability to help.  
On the other side of the bed, a mangled carcass slipped to the floor as a soul departed on a long overdue journey. From somewhere else in the house, a woman’s voice called, asking her daughter what was going on.  
“We must go,” stated Tatsumi as firmly as he could.  
“We’re in spirit form,” Tsuzuki replied distantly. “Normal humans won’t see us.”  
“Yes, but you’re right in front of the bed, they’ll stand in you.”  
“How can you be so uncaring?” Tsuzuki murmured, more sorrowfully than angrily.  
Tatsumi felt a chill excitement at hearing his partner say that. Because he deserved it. For all his practicality and self-control, next to Tsuzuki he was nothing. A pointless assemblage of proprieties without a heart.  
But even if he was worthless himself, he could still help Tsuzuki. “You don’t want to see the mother’s face when she comes in.” Tatsumi knelt beside his partner, and inserted his arm between Tsuzuki’s back and the hanging sheets. “Come on, now.”  
There was another call from outside the room.  
“I’m sorry!” Tsuzuki blurted. Tatsumi felt the warm dampness of a bloody hand reach up to cling to the back of his neck, like a child wanting to be lifted by its parent. “I didn’t mean that. I’m such a fool I can’t even do my job. Without you I would never...”  
Hearing Tsuzuki denigrate himself and praise him was more than Tatsumi could stand.  
“Shut up!” he all but shouted, despising himself but knowing that if he didn’t get them out of here now... Tsuzuki had to calm down.  
Footsteps were approaching. In sheer panic, Tatsumi shoved Tsuzuki away as hard as he could.  
Now completely freed from their messy embrace, the apprentice kagetsukai gripped his partner’s shoulders at arm’s length, so tightly that Tsuzuki gasped in shock and discomfort, and began to concentrate. Summoning all the force of his still-unpredictable skill, he invoked the shadows to teleport them back to Tsuzuki’s apartment.

It had been over an hour, and still Tsuzuki would not even cry. He half-lay, half-sat on the futon, head against the wall, as if waiting or considering something. Every time he breathed, the ends of the stray hairs which were plastered onto his cheeks moved upwards in tiny shudders before sinking back, only to rise again. A barely perceptible pulse jumped in the vulnerable hollow of his throat. Tatsumi wanted to crouch beside him and stroke it.  
Hardly appropriate. Tsuzuki would not move or speak or acknowledge him.  
The evening sun slanted in through the window, playing across the dried blood on Tsuzuki’s bare chest. Tatsumi felt light-headed with guilt, compassion and desire.  
“You must change your clothes,” he said for the tenth time, crossing the floor on shoeless feet to gaze out of the window at the sunset. “You must wash.”   
No response. Panic was rising in Tatsumi’s throat. If he thought of what he might have done to Tsuzuki, his mind froze up, so he concentrated on a patch of grass out there in the fading sunshine.  
“You were right about yourself,” he announced coldly. “You are a fool.” At the back of his brain he wondered, _why do I curse you when I mean myself?_  
Nothing.  
“Do you want me to leave?” Tatsumi finally asked, despising himself for the tremble which crept into his voice.   
“No. I’m sorry.”  
It was a tiny sound, but Tatsumi crossed the room in an instant. Slow tears slid down Tsuzuki’s face and dripped onto the futon as Tatsumi knelt beside him.  
“I didn’t mean to hurt you,” said Tatsumi urgently.   
“I know... If you hadn’t made me shut up and got us out, that poor mother would have walked into us. That poor mother, that child...”  
Tatsumi winced at the reproduction of his exact words, _shut up_. Tsuzuki moved to snuggle his head against Tatsumi’s chest, but the older shinigami resisted.  
“Why won’t you let me hold you?” Tsuzuki asked sadly. “Am I that hideous?”  
 _Because I don’t deserve it_ , thought Tatsumi clearly, but he said aloud, “My shirt is clean. You must wash first.”  
“I don’t want to wash. These stains are the truth, Tatsumi. This is who I am, a murderer. A vampire. Only it should be my blood, not hers.”  
 _Do you think I don’t feel it too?_  
“Tatsumi, don’t take this the wrong way. I admire how strong you are, but how do you do it? Why don’t you fall apart like I do?”  
 _There’s nothing of me to fall apart._  
“Please say something,” pressed Tsuzuki. “Are you angry with me?”  
“No!” said Tatsumi quickly. _But yes. Yes I am. You show me what I could never be._  
 _Let me live through you._  
“You must wash,” he repeated with gentle severity, smiling down at his partner and wiping away the tears, which had almost stopped. “You’ll get blood on the futon.”  
“It’s my futon,” said Tsuzuki indifferently.  
“I spend time here too, you know,” said Tatsumi, getting up. “Wait here,” he added as if Tsuzuki was likely to do anything else.  
Tatsumi padded off to fetch a bowl of water and a cloth. He placed them beside the futon and sat cross-legged beside his partner, facing him.  
Tsuzuki regarded the water in surprise. “Tatsumi, you don’t have to –” he began.  
“You need taking care of,” said Tatsumi, taking Tsuzuki’s collar in one hand and his arm in the other. “Come on, let’s get you out of this shirt.”  
Tsuzuki smiled, closing his eyes and going limp again.  
Tatsumi smiled too and leant forward to brush his lips across his lover’s forehead. What undeserved miracle had given him a new life, an afterlife, with this wonderful man?  
Once it was off, Tatsumi folded the filthy shirt as carefully as possible and laid it on the floor. Then he placed his left hand behind Tsuzuki’s back and began to sponge his face and chest with warm water. Just as he had tried to do after the assignment, Tsuzuki relaxed into the larger man’s grip like a child handing over responsibility for its whole being to a loving parent.  
When the water turned a darker pink and Tsuzuki’s skin began to show clean under its sheen of moisture, Tatsumi put down the cloth and bowl, leant forward again and gently nipped his partner’s ear.  
“Do you feel better now?” he murmured.  
Tsuzuki seemed to hesitate. Then he turned his face away from Tatsumi and said distinctly. “This isn’t enough. I’m sorry.”  
Tatsumi went cold. His arousal drained from him in a second.  
“I understand,” he said woodenly. It was interesting how prepared he was for this. Of course he wasn’t good enough for Tsuzuki, he had been expecting this ever since their relationship began. Even in sex, even through Tatsumi’s gawky beginner enthusiasm for the sport, he had been able to sense Tsuzuki yearning for something more than Tatsumi could give.  
“I am aware of my inexperience,” he continued, straightening up and moving his legs ready to stand. “There is of course a difference of thirty years between us. I will leave.”   
“Wait, that’s not what I meant,” said Tsuzuki. Suddenly Tatsumi felt slender fingers at his waist, undoing the buckle of his belt then sliding the leather strap out into the open.   
Their eyes met. Tsuzuki’s were bottomless pools of need.  
And Tatsumi let himself truly understand.  
Feeling as if he had stepped outside himself, Tatsumi brought his own hand down to ease the belt free of the last loop. He gently pried the plain black strap from Tsuzuki’s fingers, brought it up in front of him and doubled it over in his right hand, cradling the buckle in his left.  
Tsuzuki leant forward and kissed Tatsumi deeply as their hands closed together over the cool metal ring.  
“Are we really going to do this?” Tatsumi checked as Tsuzuki withdrew.   
“Yes,” said Tsuzuki. “Please.”  
All the neediness of Tsuzuki’s soul bled into that one word, but suddenly Tatsumi wasn’t afraid of it any more.  
They lingered for a second, not touching each other, preparing.  
“Lie on your front,” Tatsumi commanded.  
There was still something of the little boy in Tsuzuki as he scrambled eagerly to obey. Tatsumi felt a new warmth flood his groin, but he had to stay fully alert now.  
“Arms by your sides. Eyes shut. Now wait.”  
Tatsumi stood up and wandered around the room a little, edging his way into this new mental space, feeling a strange, expectant calm unlike the queasy surges of excitement he usually underwent as Tsuzuki inducted him into some new realm of erotic experience.  
But he was not even touching Tsuzuki now. He was swinging the belt through the air, getting used to the feel of it in his hand and the shape and speed of its movements. Tsuzuki must be able to hear him: so much the better.  
Tatsumi went back to the futon and crouched down to check Tsuzuki was not cheating. Apart from a pink tinge in the cheeks below the shinigami’s tightly shut eyes, he could have been asleep.  
“Good boy,” said Tatsumi. “Be patient.”  
Of course, there was a problem. Tsuzuki was at floor level and Tatsumi was over six foot tall. Flapping a belt from that height, he’d probably end up missing Tsuzuki altogether and smashing the window.   
Pushing back the thought that this was the second occasion today, that he was still a learner at shadow magic as well as sex, and that this time they’d probably emerge 200 feet over the Pacific, Tatsumi stretched out a hand, pressed it against his lover’s naked back and willed the shades to teleport them to his apartment.   
They rematerialised perfectly, Tsuzuki lying on the higher, western-style bed, Tatsumi crouching beside him, now almost at eye level.  
Tsuzuki opened his eyes in alarm. “What...” he began, looking around.  
“Sssh,” said Tatsumi, touching the belt buckle to Tsuzuki’s lips. “I told you to stay still. Now you’ll have to be punished.”  
Tsuzuki responded by closing his eyes, taking the rim of the buckle in his mouth and poking his tongue through the ring.  
“Behave yourself,” said Tatsumi, trying to keep amusement out of his voice as he tugged the belt free.   
He raised the doubled leather strap, paused for a second, then brought the buckle down on Tsuzuki’s bare shoulder.  
Tsuzuki gave a tiny grunt when the metal impacted, and a smile spread across his face. Tatsumi struck him again, a little harder, and he raised his shoulders to meet the blow.  
“Be patient,” Tatsumi cautioned him again, pressing his lover down on the mattress with a firm hand. Tatsumi strolled around to the other side of the bed, and landed two corresponding blows on Tsuzuki’s other shoulder, noting the swish and clink of the buckle as it flew and the angle it impacted against skin. He realised with quiet satisfaction that this time he had managed to hit the exact spot he wanted each time. Tsuzuki stayed perfectly still.   
“Good boy,” Tatsumi told him.  
They continued this way for a while, Tatsumi experimenting with different postures, standing in different places on either side of the bed.  
When he felt more confident, Tatsumi tried delivering a harder blow. The impact and its stinging aftermath caught Tsuzuki unawares and made him catch his breath and buck a little before he brought himself under control.  
“You may cry out once,” Tatsumi told him, landing another blow across his other shoulder. Tsuzuki let out a low moan, his muscles rippling as the mark began to fade almost before it could bloom to full redness.  
“Shinigami hide is an interesting material,” said Tatsumi. “Be still again.”   
Tatsumi put down the belt and reached under Tsuzuki to undo his pants. He allowed his hand to trail over the hardness above just a second longer than was necessary to remove the garment, then pulled it free of Tsuzuki’s legs. He stood back to fold the material carefully.  
The slightest moan escaped from Tsuzuki.  
“If you will not learn to be patient,” Tatsumi told him. “I shall launder this as well.” The pants certainly needed it – they hadn’t taken as much blood as the shirt, but personal neatness had never been Tsuzuki’s strong suit. Tatsumi averted his eyes from a food stain, and placed the limp garment over the back of a chair.  
Tatsumi looked his lover up and down as he lay submissively on his face, naked except for his boxers. Then he knelt by the bed and planted a kiss in the small of Tsuzuki’s back.  
“You are beautiful,” he told him.   
As he had before, Tatsumi started slowly, working himself into gentle rhythm on Tsuzuki’s thinly covered buttocks., enjoying his own increasing confidence, until he began to hit with greater force, watching the tiny changes in Tsuzuki’s face as he struggled to stay silent. The younger shinigami clenched his fists, and his arms began to tremble.  
“Tatsumi?” he said during a pause, his voice partly muffled by the blanket. “Please may I cry out again? And move a little?”  
“You may,” said Tatsumi, hiding his smile. “You’ve been a good boy. But let me help you first.”  
Leaning down, Tatsumi removed Tsuzuki’s boxers, careful not to make contact with the swollen cock which he knew was aching for his touch: there would be time for that later. Then Tatsumi crossed to the clothing chest and removed four lengths of white cloth.  
“Raise your arms above your head,” he instructed. Tsuzuki obeyed at once, and Tatsumi tethered his wrists tightly to the posts of the western bed. Moving to the foot of the mattress, he did the same to Tsuzuki’s ankles.  
“This is the punishment you dread and desire,” Tatsumi said quietly, releasing the doubled part of the belt so that it fell from his hand in a single length. The buckle hit the floor with a thud, bringing Tsuzuki’s head up to gaze awkwardly back over his pinned shoulder, amethyst eyes widening in fear.  
“Do you want this, Tsuzuki?” Tatsumi continued softly.  
“Yes.”  
“Then beg for it.”  
“Please whip me, Tatsumi-sensei. Please.”  
“I will. If it is genuinely too much, say ‘sakura’,” Tatsumi pushed his glasses up his nose and examined the buckle tongue, cleaning it of flaked skin before glancing at his partner again. “Do you understand?”  
“I understand,” murmured Tsuzuki. “The word is ‘sakura’.” He lowered his head.  
“Good,” said Tatsumi crisply. He drew the belt through his hand, looking for the length which would give him the longest possible swing while maintaining maximum control. No longer looking at Tsuzuki, he strolled around the room for a few moments, flexing his arm. “Beg as much as you wish, I will take no notice. There is no escape from this.”  
He had found the perfect length. It was a mathematical equation: so much length of belt equals so much agony equals so much freedom.  
Tatsumi approached the spread-eagled body and knelt beside it for the last time. He trailed his tongue down Tsuzuki’s back, almost to the crack of his ass, so that the helpless shinigami shivered and moaned.   
“You will surrender this pain,” Tatsumi whispered. “All of it.”  
“Thank you, Tatsumi.” Tsuzuki whispered back.  
Tatsumi rose smoothly to his feet, balanced himself and delivered the hardest blow he could muster across Tsuzuki’s shoulders. The shinigami screamed and bucked, making the bed creak and scrape against the floor, but his bonds held. Tatsumi beat him again and again, in a steady rhythm across shoulders, back and buttocks, and as Tsuzuki writhed and shrieked under the onslaught, Tatsumi felt an intoxicating power flood his senses. He seemed to be sharing Tsuzuki’s abandonment, pain and adrenaline sluicing through both of them.   
“Gods, no, please, Tatsumi, stop!” moaned Tsuzuki in between ragged breaths. His head jerked up and he tried to crane round to see his torturer, but his eyes seemed to have no focus. The connection between them was beyond the need for sight or touch. Tsuzuki grunted, dropping his head, and Tatsumi slackened his pace a little, teasing the wracked and trembling body with powerful yet languid strokes. Then another acceleration and red patches, pocked with angry welts and scores, began to show on the bare skin as Tatsumi struck so hard and fast that not even shinigami healing abilities could keep up.  
Tsuzuki writhed under the scouring as far as he was able, gracile and abandoned, moaning in pain and ecstasy as he ground his cock into the bed. “Please...” he moaned. “Please...”  
Tatsumi wiped the sweat from his forehead, hearing the word echo in his head, not even certain which of them had spoken it. After a moment’s pause he increased the pressure again, slicing down as hard as he could so that blood gleamed on the buckle as it hissed through the air. In spite of the sweat, his exertions felt effortless as he rode the wave of Tsuzuki’s emotions, directly plugged into the rawness of the sobs that had replaced the pleas from the top of the bed.  
Finally, Tsuzuki’s body heaved in a single great spasm. Tatsumi dropped the belt and bent down to grab his lover’s cock. A few swift jerks of the swollen shaft and Tsuzuki had come in Tatsumi’s hand with a shuddering wail louder than anything that had gone before. The older shinigami barely had time to drop his own pants and pull off his underwear with shaking, sticky hands before he came himself, crawling onto Tsuzuki’s back and covering him like a blanket as cum mixed with blood spread between their bodies and dripped onto the bed.

Everything was quiet as Tatsumi came round.  
There was the faint echo of an ache in his shoulder, passing away even as he thought about it.  
“Tsuzuki?” he said to the body beneath him.  
“Mmmm,” Tsuzuki sounded only half conscious.   
Tatsumi got up and untied his lover’s wrists and ankles, massaging the skin to encourage blood flow. He felt dizzy. He couldn’t quite believe what had just happened.   
But there were the marks on Tsuzuki’s back and ass, almost healed now, but still visible.  
Tatsumi helped his naked lover to sit up and held him close, ignoring the pinkish mess that had by now smeared itself liberally across shirt and bedclothes.   
“Sssh,” Tatsumi whispered, rocking Tsuzuki against his chest. “It’s alright now. Alright now.”  
Tsuzuki had almost stopped crying, but now he began again, more loudly than ever. Tatsumi locked his hands around Tsuzuki’s hip and swayed them back and forth, staring over Tsuzuki’s head.  
The hallucinogenic clarity of a few moments ago had vanished, and grey confusion seeped in to take its place. Tatsumi felt he did not know the person who was burrowing against his flesh. He did not know himself. It had all been too much. Too much feeling.  
What have I done? he wondered distantly. What am I?  
He could feel Tsuzuki make a tangible effort to halt his sobbing for a moment. The younger man lifted his brimming eyes to gaze into Tatsumi’s.  
“I love you so much,” he said simply, then burrowed his head back down into his lover’s chest. “Never leave me.”  
Tatsumi kissed the top of Tsuzuki’s head, still rocking and shushing automatically. Tsuzuki clung to him like a parasite, unreasoning and eternal.   
He’d tied Tsuzuki to the bed and beaten him with a leather belt.   
The part of Tatsumi’s brain which had been suspended was now waking up, and it was refusing point-blank to accept this information. Tatsumi realised with a strange mixture of embarrassment and relief that he was still wearing his glasses. Even through all that, he had kept them on.  
So he still had his self.  
A warm head was still trembling against his chest. Tatsumi felt tears splashing onto his hands.  
Tears.  
 _What have I done? What am I?_  
“I’ve made you cry,” said Tatsumi in a tone of wondering horror.  
Tsuzuki’s shuddering changed a little in quality. It seemed that, as well as sobbing, he was laughing.  
“I think you should go,” Tatsumi continued, unlatching his hands from Tsuzuki’s hip and pushing him gently away.  
“What...?” Tsuzuki bent his head back to gaze up in bewilderment. Tatsumi raised a hand to rub his forehead and hide the sight of those awful tears.   
All he had ever done for those he loved was make them cry.   
_What have I done?_  
 _What am I? Who are you?_  
“I think I am unwell,” said Tatsumi as coldly and steadily as he could manage. The spiritual barrier which had seemed such a hindrance in his relationship with Tsuzuki until now suddenly became a blessed item of armour. Tsuzuki could not discern Tatsumi’s emotions, and Tatsumi had no interest in Tsuzuki’s.   
Tsuzuki had stopped bawling, at least. He got up from the bed without touching Tatsumi, and pulled on his clothes – what there was of them.  
“Take a shirt from the chest,” Tatsumi.  
“It’ll be too big...”  
“Go naked, then!” Tatsumi snapped. “You have no shame anyway.”  
A mortified silence filled the room. Tatsumi pressed his hand hard into his forehead, trying to keep his thoughts under control. “I am tired,” he forced himself to say.  
 _Tsuzuki writhing in agonised abandon..._  
“I will see you in the office tomorrow,” Tatsumi continued. “Everything will be fine.”  
He heard Tsuzuki open the door, pause as if waiting for a signal that did not come, close it behind him... then silence until the outer door of the apartment banged shut. Vaguely Tatsumi realised that he’d sent Tsuzuki outside without shoes. Of course the idiot could teleport anyway, if he’d only take a few minutes to recover from his recent exertions.  
That was time Tatsumi had not allowed him. Time Tatsumi could not cope with. Just like he could not cope with any of this and would therefore block it from his life. He finally did remove his glasses, so that he could tidy his bedroom without seeing clearly any of the things he was holding between thumb and fingertip as he carried them out to be disposed of.

Perhaps the very worst moment was when that idiot met him in the corridor the next morning and started carrying on as if he believed that smiles, apologies and puppy eyes really would make everything fine. That blind trust made Tatsumi so angry that the polite rationalisations he had prepared died in his throat.   
“I am sorry, Tsuzuki-san,” he stated with cold simplicity. “I am not going with you on this case.”

The shame of that night and morning had lasted forty years, frozen in the back of Tatsumi’s mind, remaining as painful and as little understood as the moment when Tatsumi watched Tsuzuki’s hunched back retreating down the corridor after that final rejection.  
For so long they had nurtured careful myths: Tatsumi’s coldness, Tsuzuki’s incompetence, Tatsumi’s impatience. Thanks to those white lies they had been able to work in the same office until the hurt and rejection mellowed into a genuine friendship.  
Now the merciful layers of self-deception had been swept away with one stroke of a bamboo switch. Tsuzuki had broken the game that had sustained them for so long.  
An act of violence.   
And Tatsumi was not sure he had a defence.


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Both Tatsumi and Tsuzuki are separately trying to convince themselves their relationship has no future. Some chance.

After Tsuzuki’s departure Tatsumi worked well into the night. The damages and expenses documentation genuinely had to be completed by somebody, and though it took him a lot longer than it would have done Tsuzuki, the secretary was able to cobble together much of the relevant information from Hisoka’s reports. However, he would also need to access Tsuzuki’s PC.  
He picked up the phone.  
“Watari-san, are you still wasting the department’s electricity?”  
“Hey there, hypocrite,” came the cheery reply. “I bet you’re not sat in the dark either.”  
“Yes, but I don’t have Bunsen burners on all day.”  
“Bunsen burners run on gas.” Watari pointed out helpfully.  
Tatsumi gritted his teeth. “Which makes them, if anything, even more expensive. But that isn’t the issue. I need a favour. Could you hack Tsuzuki-san’s network and email passwords?”  
A low whistle. “That’s not very by-the-book. Do you want to check if he’s been sending mucky mails or something?”  
“No, of course not, I just need some details of his last investigation. Don’t pretend to be coy, you’d do it if he had something you wanted.”  
“Yeah, but then I’d have motivation. What’s it worth?”  
“Nothing.”  
“Wah, you utter cheapskate.”  
“Look,” Tatsumi tried not to let his frustration sound in his voice. Watari was always this way; he didn’t know why it grated on him so much tonight in particular. “This is fallout from last week. That person was too upset to handle it himself, and if I don’t get the case details so I can do it for him, he’s going to draw the wrong kind of attention from up above.”  
Watari paused. “OK,” he said, a little more seriously. “But if there’s trouble, I’m telling the teacher you pulled rank. Gimme a minute to get to the server room, my terminal here’s running a simulation.”  
“Thank-you. Phone me on Tsuzuki-san’s line,” said Tatsumi, trying to blank out the echoes set off by Watari’s use of the word ‘teacher’.  
He replaced the receiver, catching sight of his own hand as he did so. He noticed how long his fingers were, and how they tapered in a slightly feminine way which had always embarrassed him. He turned the hand palm up and studied it. Eternally smooth.  
Better get moving now. Watari wouldn’t take long.  
Tatsumi was relieved to quit his office; at the very least he would no longer be irritated by the ink stain, which he would definitely remove in tomorrow’s daylight. First he took a trip to the rest room to straighten his increasingly tired-looking suit in front of the mirror and fill his coffee mug with water for the third time that evening.  
As he raised the drink to his lips in the cool atmosphere of the tiled room, he realised that, rather than being erased by the flow of water, the taste of Tsuzuki had now transferred itself to the rim of his mug. Tatsumi lowered his hand, hesitated, raised it again, tried to reach for the soap dispenser, realised he was still holding the mug and would have to put it down first, then froze in place, utterly bewildered by his own indecision.  
The western-style cup itself had been a present from Tsuzuki. It said, “I’m not superior, I’m just better than you” in red writing on the side. Tatsumi had vowed never to use such a tacky artefact, but it always seemed to be conveniently around.  
Tatsumi felt his arm coming up again. His tongue swept around the china rim and tasted again the secretions of traumatised flesh: sickly, shocking and sweet. In return for the uncounted times Tatsumi’s fingers had lightly brushed at the face of a sad little boy he did not dare to really touch, Tsuzuki had given him a choking handful of sweat, pain and adult need.  
 _Need._  
Tatsumi set the mug beside the taps and leant uncomfortably against the projecting lip of a sink, bringing his forefingers up to rub his eyes behind his glasses. The feelings of release and shame from forty years ago had come over him again. This memory did not often get out, and when it did he treated it without mercy. Tatsumi waited, half conscious of what he was doing and half in adamant denial, but nothing happened. The carefully maintained springs of his repression refused to snap into place.  
Instead, he pictured his lover’s eyes as they had been that definitive night, unclouded wells of trust, fear and love, peering over his pinned shoulder. Tatsumi remembered the taste of Tsuzuki’s liquid self when it had been more than just a residue. The contours of his muscles as they bunched, trembled and relaxed under Tatsumi’s control. The exalted cry as he finally released his pain.  
Enough!  
Tatsumi reached for the mug, ready to rinse it out, but at that moment he heard a phone ringing.  
 _Tonight meant nothing_ , he told himself as he hurried towards the Kyushu area office. You’ve been overworked with the accounts, and Tsuzuki was overwrought because of that painful case. You’re not like that normally, and he isn’t either. He’ll have forgotten it completely by now, his moods change so fast. He’s probably at home, happily immersed in something ridiculous on the television.  
If he does think about that time forty years ago, then he’s as embarrassed as you are. Tonight will end up the same way, except that this time you won’t let it damage your friendship. He’ll thank you for pretending nothing’s happened when you see him tomorrow.  
And he never normally thinks about that night, does he.  
Does he?  
Of course not. Now do your job.  
“Yes, Watari-san, have you found it?”  
Watari’s voice was amused.  
“He’s got one and the same password for everything. Technology and our little sweetie-freak don’t go together.”  
Tatsumi clamped down on the affectionate amusement that surged up in a corner of his mind. He couldn’t afford the luxury.  
“Typical,” he commented briskly. “What is it?”  
“Sakura.”

~~~~~

Half-drunk in the late evening after his clumsy flight from the secretary’s office, Tsuzuki decided that Tatsumi would want him to shower. It seemed a Tatsumi thing to do, a ritual cleansing, but he probably wouldn’t have wanted Tsuzuki to eye the belt lying on his pile of clothes, have an attack of self-reproach and end up crying, or to drip shampoo into his eyes and knock the bottle down the toilet. And certainly not to begin frantic masturbation, leaning against the tiles while the heat made his head spin, possessed by the images and sensations of forty years ago.  
No amount of sake could blot out the living memory of Tatsumi, in all his aspects, hard curves naked on Tsuzuki’s bed or hidden under brown cloth. Spectacles gleaming in judgment. Handing over cake with a smile. Removing his belt and doubling it in his hand. Eyeing the end of a cane as if it had just insulted him. Pressing his cock against Tsuzuki’s back, spurting sweet and excruciating warmth into wounds which ached through a post-orgasmic haze. Holding Tsuzuki down on the bed so he would not be swept away.  
Tsuzuki brought himself off with the mechanical efficiency of disgust, deft even in his half-drunk condition, trembling with lust and self-revulsion, unable to stop. Their relationship was dead, he had killed it, it had never been. He had no right to ask any more of Tatsumi, who simply wanted friendship and that curious, quintessentially Tatsumi-ish arrangement where he watched over everything Tsuzuki did while pretending not to care.  
Crystal clear even after forty years, Tsuzuki remembered the blended lust and compassion in Tatsumi’s eyes and the slashing lick of the belt. The humiliation and liberation of being held fast by a pain that forced him to beg for mercy which would not come. He had abandoned himself utterly and his lover had kept him safe.  
The sweetest and most agonising truth was that, for the brief time that Tsuzuki was writhing under his hand, Tatsumi too had forgotten to be afraid.  
Tatsumi was still capable of wanting that connection, or he would never have taken the cane when Tsuzuki offered it to him. But if he hadn’t realised this about himself tonight, it was never going to happen.  
Tsuzuki slumped to the floor of the shower, stubbing his toe against the rim, and cried in earnest while hissing streaks of water struck his back and dwindled away.

~~~~

Tatsumi woke at his own desk, raised his head from a crinkled, dribble-stained sleeve and realised with horrified confusion that he could hear Konoe arriving in the next office. While he’d spent the night in this place and position before, no power in the underworld could normally make him oversleep. What could have come over him?  
Tatsumi rose stiffly into a sitting position and regarded his damp sleeve distastefully. The dry cleaners...  
... vanished in the searing recall of Tsuzuki forgetting himself in pleasure as he arched against the chair, his wounded hand still glistening with Tatsumi’s saliva.  
Emotionally receptive after his deep sleep, Tatsumi understood what he had witnessed: Tsuzuki truly free of the pain he carried closer than his shadow. That had happened twice only. Forty years ago and yesterday evening.  
Overnight, the past had changed shape. It suddenly came to Tatsumi that he had a sexual history, albeit a painfully curtailed one, running in tandem with his surface awareness of himself as a shadowmaster and a shinigami.  
 _Yeuch._  
Sex? Why was he thinking of sex? Last night he’d been doing paperwork, nothing unusual about that. But he’d been doing it because Tsuzuki... yes, the damage and expenses forms. Tatsumi realised with relief that they had been completed by force of will in the small hours. They were sitting calmly by his out tray now, mercifully beyond dribble range.  
Details swam up from the strange mental sea of last night. It had been 3am, and he’d been trying to keep the word “sakura” out of his head as he scrolled through PC files in the Kyushu area office. His eyes had blurred while Tsuzuki’s Hello Kitty eraser and cake crumbs and broken pen pot mocked him with their owner’s absence. Then he’d come back to his own clear desk to put his head down just for a little while.  
Now sun was streaming merrily through the window behind him, normalising his world. Pot plant, filing cabinet, shelves.  
The phone rang. Tatsumi snatched it up before it could make another offensive noise, wincing as his stiff muscles protested at the sudden movement. On the other end was Konoe, wanting to know whether Tatsumi was going to have the forecasts ready for him after lunch. Tatsumi had done them days ago, and said so. Odd that Konoe should be fussing about that so early in the morning, he was normally a last-minute type. Maybe Tatsumi’s good example was rubbing off on him.  
Tatsumi put the receiver down, reflecting on the joys of being organised, and suddenly feeling a lot more himself. He stretched as decorously as possible, feeling the aches of the night coagulate and flow out through his fingers.  
Sakura... it was just a word. With Tsuzuki, it could simply be the first thing he’d seen on looking out of the window as Watari tried to show him how to use the network.  
Tatsumi certainly wanted it to be just a word. How terrible if Tsuzuki remembered that embarrassing incident as anything other than the catalyst for the end of their partnership, an end which had been inevitable anyway.  
Had Tsuzuki been genuinely upset last night? Oh, Tatsumi had tried to phone him, numb with fear, but he’d just got that maddening message: “You have reached the voicemail of Tsuzuki Asato. I’m sorry I’m unavailable at the moment. Please leave a cookie after the tone.” Giggling. Beep. Then the line went dead, because Tsuzuki cleared the memory of his cheap phone so seldom that it was maxed out.  
Just as well Tatsumi hadn’t got through and said anything regrettable.  
Well now, he would probably have time to freshen up before Tsuzuki wandered in and Tatsumi could combine scolding him with getting him to sign the finished forms.  
 _It’s all right, it’s all right, it’s over._  
Tatsumi glanced at the clock. And realised in horror that Konoe had only come in after attending the monthly meeting of divisional directors, and that not even for Tsuzuki would it be first thing in the morning any more.

~~~~~~

For what may have been the first time in his afterlife, Tsuzuki woke up ten minutes before Tatsumi, though he did not know it. He caught sight of his watch lying sideways on the floor, ululated gently in despair and propelled himself out of bed.  
Even though he didn’t have a hangover – he wasn’t organised enough to have much sake in the apartment, and had been too depressed to go out for more – the vertical lift-off was a shock to his emphatically non-morning-oriented system. But he earnestly wanted to be on time for work for once. It was the only way to apologise to Tatsumi without openly referring to the fact that there was something to apologise for, which would only compound his offence in the secretary’s eyes.  
He made it, just about, by dint of expending far too much energy on teleporting from his room to the path in front of work.  
Tatsumi did not emerge from his office for the first three hours of the day.

~~~~~~

“Why did nobody rouse me?” Tatsumi demanded of his pot plant as he shook himself down and rubbed his remaining sore joints.  
The plant said nothing, but it could not have expressed the concept _because they’re shit scared of you_ any better if the planes of its leaves had been terrified faces.  
This realisation annoyed the secretary, generated a stab of self-pity, pleased him, and then sent him back to being annoyed because he was holding dialogue with a pot plant, and this madness had to stop before he degenerated to Tsuzuki’s level.  
Gods, surely his colleagues must have realised something was up when he failed to emerge for coffee? They were out there laughing at him, they had to be.  
No, in fact it was more likely that his rare lack of interest in caffeine had scared them into leaving him alone even more.  
The plant seemed to be wilting under his gaze.  
“That is correct,” Tatsumi told it.  
Nothing else for it: he had to leave his office, and do it now. He urgently needed Tsuzuki’s approval and signature on the wretched damages and expenses documentation so he could send it on up before the higher-ups’ paperwork review.  
He had been working on this stuff all morning, obviously. And by the gods, he was still Shokan Divisional Secretary Tatsumi Seiichirou, and he would strike terror into the servile soul of any employee who dared suggest he had been doing otherwise.  
“Leave whatever it is on my desk,” he told Terazuma, who very coincidentally just happened to be loitering at the mouth of the admin corridor as he swept past. Two more turns, and he was approaching the Kyushu office.  
He slowed down. He wasn’t scared, he just didn’t want to... to... That was Tsuzuki’s voice.  
“No, Hisoka, I can’t,” he was saying. “If it were just me, yes. But it wouldn’t be fair to Tatsumi. You know how private he is.”  
Hisoka. An empath. Of course.  
Tatsumi went cold... Though Hisoka would never violate Tsuzuki’s mind. If Tsuzuki wanted last night to be forgotten – which obviously he would as much as Tatsumi did, because it was the only sensible course – then everything was still safe, and Tatsumi was about to make sure it stayed that way.  
Tatsumi pressed the forms he was holding between splayed hands, feeling them dimple in the slight dampness. So he withdrew his palms again, because he was master of himself and disliked mess. This time Tsuzuki would finally realise that reliance on him was fatal, recoil from him forever and become stronger for it. Tatsumi prepared himself to march forward into the office demanding a signature, scolding Tsuzuki for forcing him to do his paperwork for him yet again. He would make it clear he knew about the password, and was disgusted by it.  
 _Haven’t I said before that I don’t like idiots?_  
Tatsumi would become a fiery tornado of sarcasm and efficiency, to snap every last shoot of emotion and cauterise the trunk forever. If only Tsuzuki’s voice wasn’t so desolately sad.  
Then he heard Hisoka’s voice rising in near-hysteria, throwing out seemingly jumbled fragments of accusation which made all too much sense to Tatsumi.  
“...What I can’t believe is that Tatsumi is taking advantage of it...”  
A truth so intimately horrible that Tatsumi welcomed the anger which billowed up through his stomach and sheathed his heart in its familiar protective glove. It eclipsed the sick fear that tried to rise with it and mastered the strange pulse of relief which had, by a split second, preceded both sensations.  
How much had that idiot Tsuzuki let slip? The damage limitation was obviously down to Tatsumi. He was going to do it well, and he was going to do it _right now._  
Tatsumi did not feel himself travel the last few metres to the office. He heard Tsuzuki bleating “Hisoka, please. I’ve told you it won’t happen again. Tatsumi made that clear enough,” then he was at the doorway, glaring in.  
Tsuzuki was standing up and leaning over his desk, arms held up at awkward angles as if he was hugging the air. Hisoka was a defensive hunch against the far wall. Had they been geometric shapes, they would have tessellated perfectly.  
He could just retreat, leave Hisoka to comfort Tsuzuki, erase himself from the scene like the stain he was. If Hisoka thought him a monster, so much the better. Tatsumi needed nothing for himself, he could feed off Tsuzuki and Hisoka’s relationship.  
Underneath it all, that had been the plan – until Tsuzuki came to him seeking the particular something that Hisoka could not offer. In forty years’ time, maybe... No, not even then.  
That was why Hisoka had right of judgment over Tatsumi.  
The secretary decidedly disliked feeling that his entire soul was in the hands of somebody who did not even know it was there. If Hisoka judged unfavourably...  
The boy shinigami was drawing breath to do just that.  
“I have?” inquired Tatsumi coldly, before Hisoka could speak. Oh, he was proud of his unflappable formal politeness as two frightened faces swung round to take him in. He did not look directly at Tsuzuki, though the question was superficially addressed to him. Instead he focused on Hisoka, who had gone very still, outwardly poised and canny as a nervous cat. Tatsumi admired that in him, that defiance and toughness overlaying a kernel of deep emotion.  
If only.... no. Everything had to be strangled. Now.  
“Exactly what have I made clear?” Tatsumi pressed on, stepping into the room. “And what in Meifu is all this shouting about?”


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Tatsumi and Tsuzuki are getting closer again. And poor Hisoka's stuck in the backwash.

When Tatsumi appeared in the doorway, Tsuzuki felt dismay, guilt, shame... and a stubborn little spark of excitement.  
He hated himself for that excitement because there was absolutely no grounds for it.  
Projected like a hologram into the front of Tsuzuki’s mind, images played out of Tatsumi sweeping him out of his chair, pinning his wrists against the wall and fixing him with a passionately aggressive kiss. In reality however, Tatsumi wasn’t even looking at him. He was concentrating on Hisoka.  
If there was one thing scarier than a Tatsumi ice glare or a Hisoka death glower, it was both locked together. If an insect had happened to fly between them, it would have dropped dead onto Hisoka’s desk.  
It was Hisoka who broke the deadlock. “ _Good morning_ , Tatsumi-san,” he articulated precisely, unsticking himself from the wall. Then he suddenly disappeared from view, dropping into his computer chair and beginning to type rapidly.  
Tatsumi moved his long, elegant fingers back and forth along the edge of the papers he was carrying, smoothing out some minute unevenness. “Kurosaki-kun,” he acknowledged. “Has this person been troubling you?”  
“Not really.” Hisoka thumped the enter key with particular force.  
“To partner him requires a sturdy temperament,” said Tatsumi.  
“Yes. Doesn’t it,” agreed Hisoka coldly.  
More furious typing from Hisoka. More paper-straightening from Tatsumi.  
 _What the hell have I done?_ Tsuzuki wondered miserably. Those two had been friends, in an undemonstrative way. They were the repression twins as much as himself and Watari were the genki twins.  
Whatever it was, he had to take action.  
“I’m such a ditz,” he put in, bringing his hands up to his mouth and screwing his eyes into slits.  
“What?” demanded Hisoka, appearing around the side of his monitor.  
“Upsetting you by broadcasting all over the shop again,” Tsuzuki looked up at Tatsumi. “You know you squashed that fly on my hand last night? Hisoka got the idea you hit me!”  
That was the world’s worst lie, but it took the pressure off his friends. Still, Tsuzuki was glad he was already squinting, because it diminished the force of the one thing that was worse than ice glare and death glower locked together – all four angry eyes bearing down exclusively on him. Tsuzuki felt the strong impulse to pull the hair which framed his face right across it in a solid curtain.  
“Tsuzuki-san, I did little last night except complete the forms which you found unworthy of your attention,” Tatsumi asserted coldly, turning away from Hisoka and stalking towards Tsuzuki like a big cat spotting new prey. “I was obliged to hack into your computer to finish them. I had hoped you might grace them with your signature this morning, would that be too much to ask?”  
Tatsumi leant over Tsuzuki’s desk, one finger tapping the paper, hard enough for the nail to leave a mark in the white surface. The lapels of his suit jacket ballooned out a little as the front caught against the edge of the desk, and Tsuzuki caught the fleeting tang of sweat. The material was creased too: Tatsumi really had spent the night here.  
Tsuzuki’s world narrowed to one brown-clad figure. Angry, slightly red-rimmed eyes glared from behind grey wire frames, daring Tsuzuki to put a foot wrong.  
Tsuzuki almost reached out to touch the shading of stubble on Tatsumi’s cheek. Almost. He caught himself in time.  
 _Just make a joke of it. Let it all die. That’s best for everyone. Even if I die with it; I’m useless anyway._  
He remembered Tatsumi’s horrified confusion and recoil. His own desperation, trying to survive his conflicting feelings in the depths of the night with nobody to hold on to.  
But what was the point of obsessing? Last night had gone just like forty years ago. Nothing had changed. The more he pushed, the more Tatsumi would withdraw.  
Tsuzuki was going to let this go. That was better than upsetting his friends any more.  
“I’m sorry, Tatsumi,” Tsuzuki whimpered, putting on his best puppy expression. “But paperwork is so boring...”  
There was a disgusted growl from the other side of the room. Tatsumi registered it too, but only a tiny twitch of his jaw gave him away.  
“I believe Kurosaki-kun finds your inefficiency as frustrating as I do.”  
Tsuzuki tried not to think about it, but he couldn’t help reflecting that the man was amazing. Even now, when Hisoka had recently broadcast a rough guide to his sex life at top volume, he was trying to muscle his way out of the embarrassment by sheer force of denial.  
If Tatsumi would channel just one tenth of that energy in a more profitable direction, Tsuzuki would have a sore ass and a happy soul.  
Uh-oh, bad thought to have. _Bad_ thought with Hisoka listening in on his emotions. Some time around catching Tatsumi’s scent, Tsuzuki had completely forgotten about maintaining mental barriers.  
Tatsumi’s finger continued to tap the papers.  
Tsuzuki looked up again to meet his ex-partner’s eyes. They were slightly narrowed, fixed on him intently; dangerous and – inexplicably – uncertain at the same time.  
“I obtained your password from Watari,” Tatsumi continued briskly.  
 _My password?_  
“As I now know it, you will have to change it.”  
Tsuzuki knew he was about to cry. Damn it, could Tatsumi leave him _nothing?_  
“I’m sorry...” he mumbled, grabbing a pen and scrawling his name on the dotted line where Tatsumi was pointing.  
Tatsumi removed the paper the second he was finished.  
“Thank you for your co-operation,” he said coldly. “I will be in my office.”  
Tsuzuki watched Tatsumi retreat through a haze of misery. “I... only wanted...” he began, but halted at a sudden thud.  
Hisoka had jumped up from his seat, deathly pale, eyes flashing.  
“Tatsumi,” the young shinigami growled in a voice that made even the shadowmaster pause in his tracks and turn to give Hisoka a startled, appraising look. “Tsuzuki is broadcasting like a fucking lighthouse. What he actually wants you to do is rip his clothes off, tie him to the desk and... gods, he can tell you the rest himself because I’m not sticking around to do it.” Hisoka clumsily pushed his chair out of the way.  
Tsuzuki’s heart ached to see that his partner was trembling.  
“Hisoka,” he pleaded. “You don’t have to do this.”  
“Shut up!” Hisoka snapped, not taking his eyes off the secretary, who was regarding him with something approaching panic.  
The young shinigami grabbed a couple of books and shoved them under his arm.  
“I mean, you’re sick in the head, Tsuzuki, but if you don’t care then why should I?” he continued, dropping his eyes to the desk and addressing it in a bitter conversational tone. “Seeing as you don’t trust me. And Tatsumi’s obviously gone mad as well, stupid of me to think anyone could hang around with an idiot like you for forty years and stay rational.”  
“Hisoka...” Tsuzuki tried again, getting up from his chair.  
“Kurosaki-kun...” began Tatsumi awkwardly.  
“I don’t want to know!” Hisoka cried as if in pain, shying away as he skirted Tatsumi’s stiffly outstretched hand. “Just don’t kill him, all right?”  
A strange look passed between the empath and the shadowmaster. Hostile and naked and pleading, on both sides.  
“You love him, don’t you,” stated Hisoka.  
Looking stunned, Tatsumi nodded.  
“Fine,” Hisoka muttered. “Whatever. Get on with it then. I’ll be in the library.” And he stalked out, slamming the door behind him.

~*~

Tsuzuki felt as if he could follow Hisoka’s movement through the building. The little empath’s angry footsteps pounded hurt and bewilderment into the concrete and stone. Tsuzuki ached to run after him, find a way to explain all this without driving him even further inside himself – but the sight of Tatsumi held him in place.  
The shadowmaster had crossed to the window, bowed his head and braced his hands against the vertical sills so that he was crucified against the light. One of his shoulders twitched, and Tsuzuki wanted to reach out and soothe it with a caress.  
 _Idiot. If you touch him, he’ll probably kill you._  
“I’m sorry,” he half-whispered, then made an effort to speak louder. “I’m sorry. I’m sure Hisoka won’t tell anyone. I’ll go and talk to him. That’ll get me out of your way.”  
There was no sign of whether Tatsumi had heard.  
The shouting, the storming out, the emotional flares… After all that, Hisoka wouldn’t _need_ to tell anyone.  
“This is all my fault,” said Tsuzuki miserably. “I understand how you feel. I mean, if I were you and I found myself caring about someone like me, I’d be disappointed too.”  
Tatsumi made no move. No indication that he was even aware of Tsuzuki’s presence.  
“I know you would never have said about... love... if I hadn’t upset Hisoka,” Tsuzuki burbled on, wishing he could just bring himself to give up and find a quiet corner where his anguish could spill over. “Though of course, it was nice to hear it after all these years. Then again you didn’t actually _say_ it and... oh gods, why don’t I shut up? I am a fucking moron.”  
Tsuzuki got clumsily to his feet. The air around him was thick with shame. He steadied himself against the desk and turned towards the door, taking things slowly. It was important to get out because he was going to burst into tears. He could at least spare Tatsumi that performance.  
Behind him, Tatsumi stirred.  
Tsuzuki spun round. If Tatsumi would just acknowledge him, he could put on his puppy act, and just maybe things would be like they always were...  
“Tsuzuki-san, why do you think so poorly of me?”  
The stinging bitterness in that short question severed Tsuzuki’s train of thought. He blinked, expecting Tatsumi to round on him.  
But nothing happened, and Tsuzuki realised that the shadowmaster’s contempt had not been intended for him. It was directed inwards.  
Tatsumi lowered his arms from the window and raised his head, still staring out into the garden, his back to the room.  
“I apologise for my abruptness,” he continued with renewed formality. “What I am trying to explain is that I understand what you are asking. Because of your feelings of guilt, you require someone trustworthy to torture you as an alternative to your committing suicide. Because of my nature, you find me the person most convenient for that task.”  
Tsuzuki tried to speak, but his voice had died. What _was_ this?  
“You have always believed your existence to be a crime,” continued Tatsumi, his voice wavering just slightly before settling back into dispassion. “I have never been able to affect that, and when I chose to lift you out of Touda’s fire, the pain you live with became my responsibility. If I had a choice, I would bring you happiness, but I am not capable of that. However, nor can I bear to lose you.”  
 _How can Tatsumi see things that way?  
Why didn’t I realise he would? _  
Tsuzuki forgot his doubts, stepped up behind Tatsumi and wrapped his arms around the older shinigami’s waist, pressing his cheek into the rigid shoulder. He fisted his hands in folds of shirt, tightening his embrace so that he felt the firm contours of Tatsumi’s ass against his groin.  
“Tatsumi, please listen to me,” Tsuzuki said, trying to put all he was into his words. “If I honestly wanted you to punish me, you could flay the skin off my bones and mash what’s left into a pulp, and it still wouldn’t be enough.”  
Tatsumi flinched at that, but Tsuzuki pressed on. “But when you and Hisoka gave me my life back, it wasn’t a burden. So I have bad days. So Hisoka checks me over every morning when I get in, to see if I’m looking suicidal today. It’s always been like that for me, one way or another. You can’t protect me from everything, and I wouldn’t ask you to, but I don’t live in despair. I notice the little things you do for me.”  
“Things I do?” Tatsumi’s voice seemed to come from far away.  
Tsuzuki took a deep breath. “If you want an example, there’s an old shirt you gave me. It wore out a long time ago from being slept in on bad nights, but I still have it. Sometimes the memories are painful, but that’s all right. The good ones are stronger.”  
Tatsumi remained absolutely rigid, his arms held away from the embrace that encircled him. Tsuzuki knew that he could well have driven Tatsumi out of reach forever, but there was no point in being coy now.  
“I see,” said Tatsumi then.  
“What do you see?” Tsuzuki questioned immediately, nuzzling Tatsumi’s shoulder.  
“I see we may both be equally damned.” Tatsumi sounded as if he were commenting on the weather while being strangled.  
“I probably am, but why you?” Tsuzuki pushed, his voice sounding strange to him in its eagerness.  
“Because... at the back of my cabinet, I have an old belt. Somehow I missed it when tidying the apartment, and afterwards it did not seem expedient to throw it away.”  
Hearing those words, a silent daze of excitement washed over Tsuzuki. He couldn’t speak. Instead, he clasped Tatsumi tighter.  
“Tsuzuki-san!” Tatsumi rapped warningly, but Tsuzuki took no notice. Warmth radiated up from the shadowmaster’s back, mingling with the sunshine that spilled through the window onto Tsuzuki’s head and shoulder. With the fingertips of one hand he caressed the smooth, unyielding leather around Tatsumi’s waist, while the other explored between shirt buttons until it found the direct heat of skin.  
Larger hands closed over Tsuzuki’s, gripped them. With a sinking heart, he felt his arms pulled gently away from Tatsumi’s body and deposited at his sides. Then Tatsumi took a step forward, as if he were admiring the trees outside.  
“I will dispose of that belt tonight,” he said coldly.  
Tsuzuki felt sick.  
“Then why did you even mention it!” he blurted, not caring about the bitterness in his voice. “How could you – oh gods, forget it. I didn’t mean to embarrass you. All this must seem nothing but filth to you. Just... don’t refuse to look at me.”  
Silence. Tatsumi’s back was stone.  
“Please!”  
“I can’t,” said Tatsumi.  
Tsuzuki whimpered – a short, dull sound. To finally know for sure that Tatsumi had felt as he did that night, and then to have it snatched away...  
“Am I that vile to you?” Tsuzuki stared at his shoes, at a bent tack stuck between the carpet tiles. Anywhere that would spare him from watching Tatsumi as he dealt his blows without even looking Tsuzuki in the eye.  
“Tsuzuki,” Tatsumi said more loudly, and the intensity in his voice cut through Tsuzuki’s shame and rising panic. “You misunderstand. It’s not you who disgusts me.”  
The emotions whirling through Tsuzuki suddenly stilled. As Tatsumi took another breath, they ran together, gathering in his chest in a single, physical mass which waited for Tatsumi’s next words to give it definition.  
“I am afraid of what I could do to you,” the shadowmaster elaborated with almost perfect evenness. “My lack of control has killed before – my mother was crying, for one moment I wished she would be silent, and the shadows ensured she was so. And now you would unleash this monster on yourself.”  
Tatsumi held himself perfectly erect, but his shoulders began to tremble. He gripped his elbow with one hand and raised the other to his forehead.  
“You are wrong if you believe I have never thought about... being with you again in that way. You were beautiful on the night I whipped you. I would use the word sacred. At the time, I did not feel I was harming you. The realisation that you trusted me that much and would open yourself to me in that way...”  
The weight in Tsuzuki’s chest lifted as Tatsumi spoke, breaking up and slipping away into the corners of his body. Tatsumi’s voice filled him instead, the little hesitations and modulations, the hints on the edge of hearing.  
“Afterwards, I doubted myself,” Tatsumi continued. “Though I was inexperienced, I was not ignorant. I had seen men behaving as I behaved that night, and they were not people worthy of respect. Yet you made it seem natural. I believe I once said you have no shame. In a way that is true. A pure-hearted person like you has no need of shame.”  
Tatsumi leant forward against the windowsill. Immediately Tsuzuki started towards him, but Tatsumi shook his head.  
“Then tell me what I _can_ do!” Tsuzuki cried, feeling his heart would burst with frustration. “You’re tearing yourself apart in front of me and you expect me just to stand here?!”  
Tatsumi exhaled slowly, and the tension seemed to seep out of him with his breath, leaving him an ordinary, tired man.  
“I think perhaps...” he faltered, tried again. “Perhaps you can guide me, Tsuzuki-san, because I seem to have lost my way. I have always tried to live as an upright man... and I have always tried to protect you. I wiped away your tears and threatened your enemies. Then one day I woke up to see you on your knees in the middle of a holocaust, holding your arms out to death.  
“I don’t want to fail you again. But you are asking me to accept a part of myself that contradicts everything I stand for. I would force you into happiness against your will, on my terms.”  
“How is it against my will?” Tsuzuki protested.  
“Do you really understand what I am saying?” Tatsumi’s eyes rose to meet Tsuzuki’s, and a hard spark kindled behind them. “Do you understand that as I stand here I am imagining myself stripping you, binding you to the desk, and beating you until you scream? That I have lost myself so far as to desire this? So far as to do it, if you ask me?”  
Tsuzuki did not know which one of them had moved, but suddenly he was inside Tatsumi’s arms. Those arms closed around him, hesitantly at first, as if afraid of damaging him, then pressing in harder.  
“Then I’m asking you,” Tsuzuki murmured, snuggling into the warm, Tatsumi-smelling hollow between neck and shoulder “Let’s go down together. Go ahead, beat me till I scream. Because I know you’ll hold me safe while I do it.”  
There was a pause.  
Tatsumi’s hand moved up to stroke Tsuzuki’s hair just once then fell away, leaving him free to move.  
Tsuzuki stepped back. With a quick sliding motion, he brought his hands to Tatsumi’s hips, trailed them round to the front, then unclasped Tatsumi’s belt and pulled the leather free with a lingering hiss.  
“I can let go of the fear if you can,” Tsuzuki said, looking up as he placed the belt in the hand which rose automatically to receive it.  
Tatsumi’s fingers closed over the belt, but Tsuzuki realised with a jolt of unease that the shadowmaster was not looking at him. Though his eyes were barely more than a foot away from Tsuzuki’s, he was looking _through_ the younger shinigami, as if concentrating on something invisible.  
“Tatsumi...?” he began, but he was cut off by a rattling hiss as the room suddenly dimmed - the blind had blanked out the window. Tsuzuki glanced around, trying to adjust to the new twilight, and picked out scraps of shadow swarming across the walls to gather around the vents, the window and the door.  
“Soundproofing,” said Tatsumi, at the same time as realisation hit Tsuzuki.  
Tatsumi smiled softly, his head slightly to one side, studying Tsuzuki as he took him back into his arms, the belt and the fist that held it pressing lightly into the younger shinigami’s back.  
“You always amaze,” he said simply. “I suppose every man has his weakness, even if he is dead. I don’t know how I’ll feel about this tomorrow. But yes, Asato, I will hold you safe today.”  
“Tatsumi,” said Tsuzuki urgently, trying to fight back his rising excitement for just a moment longer. “You are OK with this, aren’t you? Don’t do it just for me. I don’t want this to end up like the other time.”  
Tatsumi leant in, pressing his temple against the top of Tsuzuki’s head so that his glasses gave a little click.  
“I’ve explained my feelings, and told you that you are my guide. If you say this is right, then it is right.”  
Tatsumi hugged Tsuzuki tightly, then withdrew, ghosting the lightest of kisses across his cheek.  
“Now,” he continued calmly. “Do you want this?”  
Tatsumi raised the buckle of the belt to Tsuzuki’s lips. Trembling with fear, anticipation and desire, the shinigami kissed it, just as he remembered doing so long ago.  
Tatsumi smiled gently, while the hard spark danced in his eyes.  
“Give me your pain, Tsuzuki-san.”


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Tatsumi and Tsuzuki find they can't hold back any longer.

Tatsumi had a sense of dislocation, as if the steel traps of his logic were trying to close around this strange new experience but could only bite on air. Reason and desire had become so utterly mismatched that the only way forward was to make a clear choice between them.  
Except there was no real question of choice, because Tsuzuki was happy. His eyes were closer to purple now than to their usual amethyst, windows on an unfathomed depth of need and desire.  
It was so simple, finally, the thing Tatsumi had always wanted and never known how to ask for: Tsuzuki’s happiness.  
 _Give me your pain, Tsuzuki-san._  
There would be time later to chart how the utterly forbidden had become the utterly essential. Now, to the best of his abilities, he was going to sexually torture Tsuzuki. He would pare away the dull layers of pretence and fear and uncover the real man.  
 _My Tsuzuki._  
“Remove your clothes, place them on the side table and wait,” instructed Tatsumi.  
Leaving Tsuzuki to obey, he turned his attention to the shinigami’s mess of a desk. He shut down the computer, disconnecting it and setting it against the wall before piling armfuls of other detritus around it. Stripping to the waist, he laid his clothes carefully across the monitor, then removed his shoes and socks and placed them beside the heaped papers.  
By the time he looked back, Tsuzuki was standing, head submissively lowered, arms at his sides, naked.  
In the intervening years, Tatsumi had forgotten that Tsuzuki’s erect penis listed slightly to his left. The one imperfection that beautiful body allowed.  
So human, that detail.  
Tatsumi stared, simple lust for a moment overwhelming his clarity of purpose. Twin images of Tsuzuki merged and overwrote each other in the figure before him. The aesthetically gorgeous body and the clumsy, needy, childish, powerful soul.  
 _My Tsuzuki._  
Tsuzuki stood there, finally ready to share the burden of himself, if Tatsumi was strong enough to bear it.  
The threadbare carpet alien against his bare feet, Tatsumi stepped forward.  
Taking a wrist in each hand, he pushed them behind Tsuzuki’s back and gripped them there in a single fist of his own. Tsuzuki relinquished control of his arms without question, lolling his head back, eyes half-closed, as if to savour his surrender. Tatsumi tightened his grasp and saw the effect as Tsuzuki’s bottom lip twitched slightly – the smallest sensuous quiver of discomfort.  
“You are going to suffer,” Tatsumi whispered, reaching his free hand around to twine in his lover’s soft, dark hair.  
Cinnamon-sweat fragrance filled Tatsumi’s nostrils as he guided the younger shinigami around and backed him towards his cleared desk.  
Tsuzuki’s ass came up hard against the wooden edge, making him gasp and glance down. At this, Tatsumi yanked hard on Tsuzuki’s hair, forcing his head back.  
“Sssh,” he soothed, feeling Tsuzuki try to relax and ease the strain on his scalp.  
Tatsumi waited until Tsuzuki was submissively limp again, his only visible movement a slight tremor in his exposed throat.  
Holding Tsuzuki firmly in place, Tatsumi ran the tip of his tongue lightly down the ridge of his neck, mentally daring his captive to react.  
Tsuzuki stayed perfectly still.  
Tatsumi reached Tsuzuki’s chest and branched out towards a dark nipple, at the same time nudging a knee in between Tsuzuki’s legs, always careful to leave his penis untouched. Tsuzuki gave a little whimper of frustration, thrusting his groin forwards, but Tatsumi growled a warning and the body in his grasp shuddered to stillness again.  
Tatsumi bent over, his mouth at Tsuzuki’s chest. He closed in on Tsuzuki’s nipple and began to suck and nibble at it, gently at first.  
Then he paused for a fraction of a second, and bit down hard.  
Tsuzuki’s whole body jerked as he let out an animal squeal, agonised and triumphant. Tatsumi felt a savage joy of his own as he reinforced his grip on Tsuzuki’s struggling wrists, still pinching and kneading with his teeth. The current of exultation lingered, passing from one man to the other, sparking to life again as Tatsumi switched to the other nipple, sucking it to alertness before crushing the tender bud of flesh between his teeth, tugging and twisting. Tsuzuki shuddered and moaned, his head twitching, pulling on the hair in Tatsumi’s grasp.  
Tatsumi released the tortured nipple and straightened up, raising Tsuzuki fully upright. He let go of Tsuzuki’s hair and grabbed his shoulder, spinning him round, then bending him face down over the desk.  
“Wait,” he instructed, giving Tsuzuki’s spine a cautionary press with his palm, then went to pick through the piles of clothes. He looked round to check Tsuzuki was obeying him.  
Beyond the pert, inviting hummocks of his ass, Tsuzuki’s naked back stretched away across the desk. A canvas, or a stage for catharsis.  
Just as it had been 40 years ago: Tsuzuki spreadeagled against dark sheets in Tatsumi’s apartment. Waiting, dependent on Tatsumi for a gift only he could give.  
“Put your arms over the edge,” Tatsumi directed, returning. He used Tsuzuki’s own belt to bind his wrists to the short leg that supported the desk drawers. Then he went back around behind Tsuzuki and pulled his legs apart, binding each ankle to the feet of the desk with their neck ties.  
“Try to move,” he instructed then, getting up. Tsuzuki wriggled obediently, and succeeded in rubbing his cock across the wooden surface, making him whimper.  
“Enough of that.” Tatsumi lifted Tsuzuki by the hip, then used the shinigami’s own pants to wedge his groin into position. Then he rounded the desk and inserted a rolled-up shirt under Tsuzuki’s cheek, which stuck half way out over the wooden edge.  
“So you don’t hurt yourself,” said Tatsumi softly, running a finger across his lover’s jaw. “I will be the only one to hurt you.”  
“Thank you,” murmured Tsuzuki, nuzzling the finger before lifting his head to look up as best he could.  
“Tatsumi-sensei?” he said in a small voice. “Please, blindfold me?”  
Tatsumi hesitated, not sure what to make of this request.  
“Why?” he asked cautiously, staring down into Tsuzuki’s eyes, which were dark violet now.  
For a moment Tsuzuki just smiled at him, shy and boyish and utterly lovely, his head beginning to tremble a little with the tension of holding itself above his pinned body.  
“I don’t want any distractions,” he explained.  
Tatsumi lowered himself into a crouch, gently pressed Tsuzuki’s head down against the rolled-up shirt, and kissed his brow.  
 _My Tsuzuki._  
Then he straightened up, fetched the large white handkerchief from his jacket, and sealed his lover into the dark.  
When the handkerchief was secure, Tatsumi reached out and ran a slow hand up Tsuzuki’s back as it lay stretched across the desk in front of him, skin shining pale in the muted light that filtered through the drawn blind.  
“You are helpless,” Tatsumi observed, moving a single knuckle across the lower half of the face that lay cradled in sightless docility below him. Tsuzuki seemed so small now, trusting and peaceful.  
Tsuzuki whimpered softly, a grateful sound of confirmation.  
“You remember the word that will stop this?” Tatsumi asked.  
“Sakura,” Tsuzuki confirmed quietly, his lips curving in a slight smile.  
Tatsumi brought his fingers to his lover’s mouth. The shinigami took them in, tongue flickering against the tips before he released them.  
“Are you ready for this, Tsuzuki-san?”  
“Whip me. Please,” Tsuzuki begged.  
Tatsumi touched his hand to Tsuzuki’s shoulder then dragged it slowly back, raking with his nails so that red lines flared against his lover’s skin as lust flared in his groin.  
“I will,” he promised.

~~~~~

As Tatsumi bound him to the desk, Tsuzuki relaxed. He pulled gently against his bonds, feeling their comforting tightness. There was no need for hope now.  
He had one last view of kind, hungry blue eyes studying him through oval rims before his sight was blocked by a band of black, shading to grey above and below. He closed his eyes then, content that even if he opened them, the outside world would not reach him.  
For the last time, he begged for what he wanted, and knew Tatsumi was going to provide it. That was the best part. Not the release itself, but knowing Tatsumi loved him enough to share it with him.  
Tsuzuki knew he was easy to hurt. He was too childish and vulnerable, even after seven decades as a guardian of death. But he’d also got used to most kinds of pain, drinking them in and letting them blur into the darkness at the bottom of his heart.  
Into the place where the pain was, Tatsumi would enter. Tatsumi, who protected with fury, who made the shadows themselves a haven. Tatsumi would purify him.  
In Tatsumi’s darkness, Tsuzuki rested small and safe.  
Behind him, in the physical world, he could hear movement. There was a swish and a thud – the belt travelling through the air and striking fabric. Another. More. Tatsumi was practising.  
Tsuzuki shivered slightly, anticipating the pain, the fiery intimacy of metal scoring through tissue. Now he was tied down again, his body remembered the last time. How the pain built, and took over, and drowned out everything – and then suddenly was gone, and the world was born again, and for a few moments Tatsumi was there to hold him.  
For a few sweet moments only. And then...  
Tsuzuki turned away from that memory, instead imagining Tatsumi as he knew his lover must be at this moment: naked to the waist, glasses still fixed in place, expression sharp with intent, muscles working smoothly as he applied himself to his preparations. Tsuzuki could sense his concentration, the perfect focus of will that defined Tatsumi’s conscious mind, so different from Tsuzuki’s own messy jumble of thoughts.  
 _Tatsumi._  
Tatsumi was strong. He would resist the temptation of Tsuzuki’s naked flesh until the time was right.  
 _Soon. Please._  
The wait was becoming endless. His skin crawled with the expectation of touch, of torture, of anything. It did not come.  
 _Tatsumi, hold me safe.  
Tatsumi...? _  
Nothing.  
The sorrow of Tsuzuki’s soul surfaced and hardened in his chest like a brittle, frozen sea. He longed for the first crack of the belt that would smash the ice.  
Nothing.  
... the blow came.  
Tatsumi had struck him softly to begin with, with the strap only, across both cheeks of his ass. It was as much a caress as a blow and Tsuzuki whined his pleasure, trying to lift himself towards the sensation.  
A harder blow to his right flank pushed him back down, and the impact cleared Tsuzuki’s thoughts. He could sense Tatsumi behind him, the clear sharp tang of his mind as he assessed Tsuzuki’s reactions.  
Tsuzuki exhaled and squirmed sensuously under the scrutiny, feeling the burn in his backside soften to a glow and spread through his body. He felt lighter, as if an internal pressure had been eased – or perhaps not yet eased, but shifted. It was closer to the surface now, ready to burst out and bleed away.  
Suddenly he felt the warmth of a hand, possessively grasping his backside where the belt had struck. The thumb stroked downwards, parting flesh to brush Tsuzuki’s entrance with the tip of its nail while fingers squeezed the curve of his buttock.  
“You want more?” The words penetrated Tsuzuki’s dark world of physical sensations, Tatsumi’s tone was controlled, yet slightly thicker than usual. Tsuzuki whimpered enthusiastic assent.  
Suddenly Tatsumi’s hand withdrew, but the sensation of cold air was wiped out almost immediately by a slashing lick of the belt, the leather hitting edge on before tickling away down Tsuzuki’s leg. This time the pain did not die away, but set up a dull throbbing.  
Tsuzuki shifted his head, turning it to rest on his other cheek. The edge of the desk was beginning to bite into him in spite of the rolled-up shirt, but there was no way to escape the discomfort.  
No escape.  
At last.  
A crosswise blow delivered a painful curling snap around Tsuzuki’s inner left thigh, making him gasp. He felt a lurch of nausea as the pain took hold, as his limbs tensed instinctively, then an afterglow of aches pressed in on him from all sides – ass, wrists, ankles and cheek – conflicting with the already mixed sensations as his trapped erection pushed up into his body and down against the cloth-covered surface of the desk.  
A matching strike on the other side and Tsuzuki clenched his fists against the vicious smart. He shifted his head again, but he carried the pain and the darkness with him, perfectly enclosed in Tatsumi’s world.  
“Brace yourself,” came the soft words.  
There was a quiet clink, and Tsuzuki felt cold metal held against his skin.  
An indrawn breath, and pain exploded in his left buttock, the buckle imprinting itself like a brand. Tsuzuki cried out, wincing the tiny distance that the bondage would allow him before dragging himself back.  
 _I can endure this. Watch me embrace this. For you._  
But the expected full-on assault did not come. Instead, Tatsumi began a steady pattern of caressing blows with the strap end, hardly more than warming the skin across Tsuzuki’s ass and shoulders. Tsuzuki tried to swallow his frustration, to relax into the swish of the belt and Tatsumi’s measured breathing.  
Suddenly there was a pause. Then Tsuzuki felt a presence looming close above his body, radiating warmth and purpose.  
“I want to hurt you more,” Tatsumi murmured, his breath tickling Tsuzuki’s ear. Tsuzuki caught the tang of sweat, stronger now. Tatsumi’s hand was pressing into the skin of his back, strong and possessive as the fingers traced light wounds Tatsumi himself had made.  
 _Take me,_ willed Tsuzuki, suddenly and without reservation.  
“Shall I torture you, Asato?”  
Tsuzuki thrilled to the hunger in his lover’s voice, but at the same time cold fear welled up inside him.  
This would be pain. Ugly suffering. Could he really do this? Could he ask Tatsumi to do this?  
He turned his head, opened his eyes – but all he saw was darkness as his lashes brushed against the folds of Tatsumi’s handkerchief.  
 _Safe._  
“Please,” Tsuzuki begged. “Don’t stop.”  
“Then scream for me,” said Tatsumi, his voice thick with desire.  
There was a second of silence, accompanied by a subtle change in the air as Tatsumi stood away from Tsuzuki’s body. The buckle clinked lightly, almost delicately, overhead - and a slicing blow came down across Tsuzuki’s upper back, tearing a yell from his throat.  
Tsuzuki twisted his head in a vain attempt at escape, clumsily banging it against the desk. Another strike and the metal tongue of the belt drove itself into his shoulder with the force of the swing, piercing flesh before whisking away only to return, hitting a spot a just a few inches away. Tsuzuki heard himself grunt, felt the ties digging into his ankles as his legs jerked involuntarily.  
“Good boy, Asato,” murmured Tatsumi encouragingly. “Show me your pain.”  
Tsuzuki felt gentle fingers caress the inside of his thigh. Through the nausea, he wished for more pain, more exposure, so he could offer it all to Tatsumi.  
“Tatsu-” he started, but a savage blow to his ass turned the word into an incoherent cry, and then he was keening, a high-pitched sound of excitement or panic, he didn’t know which. Tatsumi struck the other buttock, harder still, the metal seeming to sear Tsuzuki’s flesh, and the pain wiped out his awareness even of sound – there was nothing but darkness, and Tsuzuki was falling into insanity, alone, as he had always known he would...  
No, Tatsumi was falling with him. He was wrapped in shadows, a silent, dark, sure, intent presence cradled him as he fell.  
“Tatsumi!” he cried, or thought he cried, he wasn’t sure what was real.  
More blows, raining on spots that were already raw, awakening the dull throb into a stinging rage. Tsuzuki lost his grip on time, on the number of hurts as his back and ass merged into a single mass of anguished flame which pulled him upwards at the same time as the belt smacked him down. The conscious world narrowed to a wordless tunnel of pain. There were only confused snatches of Tatsumi’s breathing, the clink of the buckle, the creak of the desk, coming in brief bursts between waves of anguish. Tsuzuki’s bonds had loosened a little from the straining, and his erection banged and scraped against his folded pants as he heaved, caught between conflicting desperation to escape and to court the pain. The fitful contact sparked elusive fragments of pleasure.  
He heard himself moaning or humming as the physical agony of the whipping raged alongside a strange, sensuous flame of longing that was fanned by the feelings of desire flowing from Tatsumi. Tatsumi loved seeing him like this. Abandoned. Open.  
“Stop!” cried Tsuzuki. He was dimly aware that he could call ‘sakura’ but no, he didn’t want to do that, he didn’t mean ‘stop’ in that way, he meant he wanted himself to stop being, he wanted Tatsumi to destroy him, save him, take all of him. “Tatsumi, please!”  
Tatsumi ignored his cries, and Tsuzuki was glad of it as he disintegrated in the fire of Tatsumi’s strength. He felt the despair of his own insignificance, merged with fierce relief that hope was finally gone, resistance was broken, there was only suffering, the impossibility of endurance and the fact of more suffering. He felt his skin tear and open, felt the tongue of the buckle snag inside wounds it had created and jerk its savage way free through flesh already raw from abuse. He screamed again and again but the sound had no substance, the air itself rejected him. There was no reality except the acid kiss of the whip.  
Then the blows stopped.  
Tsuzuki lay drenched and stunned with submission, saturated by sensation. Pain, adrenaline, the itch of healing, exhaustion, relief...  
Loneliness.  
He heard buttons unclasping behind him, the rustle of fabric.  
“Tatsumi?”  
“Lubrication,” came the single terse word.  
A second later, Tsuzuki felt his hips being lifted, then the folded pants were pulled out from underneath him and fingers brushed against his penis.  
At that touch, great jolt of light seemed to go through Tsuzuki. His bonds evaporated, and he was flying, the burning of his wounds a hazy background to the carnal bliss of the firm touch against his sore cock. As Tatsumi’s hand worked his shaft, Tsuzuki felt lips and teeth against the raw skin of his ass. Soothing saliva alternated with the throbbing pressure of bites as Tatsumi worked outwards across his right cheek, then began on the left, moving further and further inwards.  
Tsuzuki felt a sudden warmth at his entrance. The exquisite moistness of Tatsumi’s tongue was coaxing the tight ring of muscle at the same time as his fingers tightened more firmly around Tsuzuki’s cock, jerking faster now, until the combination of possessive pressure and soft, intimate intrusion tipped him over the edge into orgasm.  
Even as he came he felt Tatsumi holding him, the hand that had worked him to climax moving up to gather his semen before it could disperse into a sticky mess between his stomach and the desk.  
Tatsumi thought of everything, even now.  
Tatsumi, thought Tsuzuki hazily, hoping that on some level his lover would hear and understand him. _I love you._  
Tatsumi’s tongue had withdrawn, but it was replaced by the curved head of a finger, slicked with semen, slipping easily inside Tsuzuki. Another joined it almost immediately, making his muscles tremble on the edge of rebellion as he willed them to relax.  
 _It’s been too long_ , he thought wryly, drifting a little way out of his bruised and sated body. _I should’ve practised, maybe Hisoka would have helped me._  
Then the fingers were removed and Tsuzuki felt something much larger at his entrance. His muscles stretched and burned as the head of Tatsumi’s penis worked its way inside while fingers dug into the abused flesh of Tsuzuki’s hips.  
A second later, Tatsumi slammed into Tsuzuki full length, jolting him hard, kindling a new pain inside his exhausted body as muscles clamped and fought before relaxing, accepting the strange pleasure of their new position around this final, sweetest invasion. His cock ached sweetly, crushed between his torso and the desk.  
Tatsumi was inside him and all around him, leaning over him, his body heating the very air until it burned against Tsuzuki’s ruined back. The shadowmaster’s breath tickled Tsuzuki’s hair, his sweat a deliciously heavy tang in Tsuzuki’s nostrils, and he felt Tatsumi’s eyes on him, lustful and intent and darkly humorous  
“I’m going to fuck you into the desk,” the growl sounded close to Tsuzuki’s ear.  
Tsuzuki felt himself dragged back and forth across the wooden surface as Tatsumi rode him, the relentless friction of the desk against his shaft sending shivering, half-queasy sensations of arousal to his reeling brain. It didn’t matter now if he was feeling pain or pleasure, so long as the source was Tatsumi. The aching of his limbs, the lingering discomfort of fullness, the jolt of bliss as the cock inside him brushed that crucial spot, it was all one. All Tatsumi.  
Tatsumi slowed his rhythm, letting go of Tsuzuki’s hips, and Tsuzuki squirmed and whimpered as strong fingers raked down his back, grinding sticky secretions into half-closed welts. Then Tatsumi slipped his hand back under Tsuzuki’s stomach, fingering his cock to exquisite life even now, and the confusion and anguish were overwhelmed in a flood of pleasure. Tsuzuki came a second time, writhing against his lover’s groin as Tatsumi once again hit the hidden spot inside him.  
Tsuzuki collapsed onto the desk, ears ringing with his own cry. He felt the shudder as Tatsumi climaxed, Tsuzuki’s name bursting from him in a hoarse yell.  
Then Tatsumi slipped out of him, and suddenly Tsuzuki was alone, stretched on his belly in a slick of congealing fluids, whole, himself once again, but still sealed in darkness.  
“Tatsumi...?”

~~~~~

Tatsumi stood back, steadying himself against a corner of the desk, trying to bring his body under control.  
His ears still rang with the crack of the belt, with his own harsh panting and Tsuzuki’s cries of anguish and sweet release, but as his immediate physical excitement calmed, the room around him faded with it.  
Though his hands anchored themselves to wood, his conscious mind was drawn through the mental door that had swung open as he tortured and loved Tsuzuki. In the dazzling space on the other side, resurgent memories exploded around him like silent novae, drenching him in the light of their sudden meaning, changing the colours of his thought.  
What he and Tsuzuki had just done was not an aberration. It was a culmination, the final sparking into fire of the current which had been flowing between them, unspoken and unanalysed, since they had first met.  
The half-forgotten incidents of unease or embarrassment, the uncomfortable questions on the edge of consciousness, all the seeming junk he had tried to push away in his effort to be Tsuzuki’s honourable protector… through these ran the thread – the fuse – that bound them together.  
Tatsumi remembered.  
He saw himself and Tsuzuki in the cramped office they had shared as partners, writing up their first really difficult case. Tsuzuki kept making irritating, hangdog jokes about needing a “firm hand” and deserving to be “punished” for vacillating at a crucial moment. Tatsumi responded sometimes indulgently and sometimes with open irritation at this behaviour from the supposedly senior member of their partnership, but always, always after a pause that was just a split-second too long, or too short, or somehow loaded in a way that he did not understand, and which frustrated him even while it provoked a timid smile from Tsuzuki. That smile frightened him.  
A few weeks later, insisting it was a compulsory element of training, Tsuzuki made Tatsumi give him an account of his life on Earth, including his struggle to support his mother and sister and his employment in a house which provided specialist services for American expatriates.  
“I did not participate,” Tatsumi emphasised. “But I saw, and heard.”  
“You were disgusted, I suppose,” said Tsuzuki lightly, and the obvious agreement rose to Tatsumi’s lips – only to die when he saw the strange, piercing brightness of the look Tsuzuki was giving him.  
“Some of the men...” he blurted then. “Only foreigners. But the practices... It was not my place to judge...” Suddenly he was unable to finish a sentence, barely recognising his own voice. It took Tsuzuki to rescue the situation by telling his own story, and then Tatsumi forgot any awkwardness between them as anger at the circumstances of his partner’s short life blotted out all other thought.  
They became lovers at Tsuzuki’s instigation. One night, Tsuzuki had paused on his way through the door of his apartment, his face in shadow.  
“Tatsumi... do you want to come in?”  
Tsuzuki made it seem natural for him to be attracted to another man, even after a lifetime of denying the very idea.  
For a while, that had been enough for both of them. Tatsumi had sensed there was something else Tsuzuki wanted from him but he thought it was simply more of the same, that Tsuzuki was frustrated with his inexperience as a lover and would grow happier as Tatsumi grew more skilled.  
Then one night, after a frustrating dead end in the field, Tsuzuki, sitting a little drunk on Tatsumi’s bed, had stated it openly.  
“Come on,” he said, picking up the apprentice Kagetsukai’s belt as he undressed. “Why don’t you give me a few strokes with this?” His eyes followed the buckle, which glinted in the electric light as he waved it gently on the end of its strap. “That’s what you meant by specialist services, wasn’t it? And you know me, I’d probably enjoy it.”  
Tatsumi was so angry that they went to bed in silence. He lay there with his mind blank, only once flinching violently as Tsuzuki extended a tentative hand. Then suddenly he was fucking Tsuzuki hard in the pitch darkness, taking him dry, pinning his wrists against the bed while he uttered strange, forlorn, sexy little cries into the pillow.  
Not long after that, the first whipping.  
From that time on, although they were no longer partners and certainly not lovers, there had been moments. Like the Kyoto hotel room, with Tsuzuki weeping and Tatsumi trying to calm him with inanities about manliness. And all the time, the implicit plea in the flex of Tsuzuki’s fingers and the catch of his breath: push me back, hard onto the bed. _Help me use this pain. It won’t go away but we can make it serve us. Face it. Face me._  
But Tatsumi had turned away once again, compromised with the easier comforts of sightseeing and dinner – and even that only at Hisoka’s suggestion. Tatsumi, the selfless, sexless martyr guardian who protected Tsu-chan, but only from the dangers he could bear to see, plying a starving adult with sweets and platitudes.  
Tatsumi’s reward had been to see Tsuzuki choose a fiery death with Muraki over the cold absence that he himself continued to offer. And even then he had hesitated in reaching out to Tsuzuki.  
“I didn’t want to interfere with an easy death,” he had confessed in the infirmary, and it was true. But perhaps he also knew that, if he lifted Tsuzuki out of the fire, not even Hisoka would be able to save them from facing each other for much longer. Sooner or later they would be alone in a room, with Tsuzuki’s need heavy in the air, and Tatsumi’s pretended indifference gone beyond recall.  
In the present day, Tatsumi stepped back. He stood up straight in the middle of the Kyushu office, naked except for smears of blood and semen, and adjusted his glasses.  
He no longer needed that pretence.  
The shadowmaster looked down to see what he had done.  
Tsuzuki lay trembling and bloodied, leaking trails from half-healed wounds. His head sat awkwardly on the once-folded shirt, which was now a creased mass that trailed off the edge of the desk.  
Seeming to feel Tatsumi’s eyes on him, he smiled hesitantly.  
“Tatsumi...?” he said, stirring in his loosened bonds and raising his head slightly. His expression was anxious beneath the skewed bar of his blindfold. Hair had plastered itself across his cheek and he jerked his head to dislodge the tendrils that were tickling his mouth, but they were too firmly stuck.  
Tatsumi’s heart shook with tenderness as he hastened forwards.  
 _My Tsuzuki... you let me see you._  
“Sssh,” Tatsumi soothed then, leaning in to cover the younger shinigami’s body with his own. Tsuzuki whimpered a little, flinching away from the discomfort of pressure against his still-raw skin before settling into place under the new weight. Tatsumi reached out to brush the hairs away, and Tsuzuki pressed his cheek into Tatsumi’s fingers, following the slight touch as far as he could.  
“Come on,” Tatsumi said, straightening up and patting Tsuzuki lightly on the ass. “Let’s get you on your feet again.”  
He reached for Tsuzuki’s blindfold, but in shifting to listen for what Tatsumi was doing the younger man’s head moved just out of his reach.  
Perhaps it was better to release him first anyway, Tatsumi reasoned, swallowing a sudden feeling of unease.  
“I’m going to untie your feet.” Tatsumi enunciated his words precisely and levelly, his eyes fixed on the visible half of Tsuzuki’s face.  
The younger shinigami did not react. His expression had become oddly still and remote and his emotional aura, which had been so intense as they made love, seemed almost blank. He was either half-conscious and feeling very little, or feeling it at a level only an empath could penetrate.  
“Tsuzuki?”  
No reply.  
A tear trickled from beneath the shadow of the loosened blindfold and dripped onto the desk.  
Heart pounding with a familiar, unnameable dread, a heightened form of the fear he always felt around Tsuzuki, Tatsumi tried again.  
“What’s wrong?” He ran a reassuring hand around Tsuzuki’s hip. “Talk to me.”  
No reply.  
“I’m going to untie your left leg.” Tatsumi forced himself to take his eyes off Tsuzuki’s face and crouch down. “I’m there. The knot is ...” Tatsumi controlled his frustration, steadying his fingers, it would do him no good to fumble. “Very tight.” He held the loosened binding away from Tsuzuki’s skin, struggling with the snarled material.  
Suddenly Tsuzuki’s ankle kicked towards Tatsumi’s finger, capturing it against the tie.  
“What...?!” Tatsumi protested, but the word was lost in the sudden, violent creaking and rattling of wood.  
Yanking painfully on his hand, Tatsumi freed himself and struggled upright to see Tsuzuki thrashing in his bonds, fighting them so hard they seemed ready to snap.  
“Tatsumi!” Tsuzuki cried, his voice high and unnatural, shockingly loud in the soundproofed office. His legs strained against the knotted ties, and he tried to look round, not seeming to understand why he couldn’t move. “Tatsumi! Don’t leave me! Sakura!”  
“It’s me,” Tatsumi tried to speak steadily, catching Tsuzuki’s writhing body by the waist, desperate to get through to his terrified lover. But Tsuzuki seemed too far gone to heed him.  
Tatsumi forced himself to let go, to stand back.  
“I’m going to cut your legs free,” he said clearly, and immediately sent blades of shadow slicing through the taut neckties, wincing as one of them drew a thin line of blood from Tsuzuki’s right calf. Released, Tsuzuki’s legs jerked unsteadily inwards towards his centre of balance.  
Tatsumi realised with a new start of horror that Tsuzuki was trying to stand.  
“You can’t stand up,” Tatsumi forced himself to sound rational, propelling himself around behind Tsuzuki’s desk. “Please, you’ll hurt yourself. Your hands are still tied.”  
Tatsumi could not cut through the belt around Tsuzuki’s wrists without risking a major artery. He crouched down to unfasten the binding by hand, forcing himself to ignore Tsuzuki’s keening and the way his sightless head butted at Tatsumi, colliding with his shoulder and making him fumble with the buckle. Tears splashed Tatsumi’s hands.  
Finally the belt clunked to the floor. Tsuzuki’s arms shot upwards in a spasm but the movement failed as his numb muscles gave out.  
“Tatsumi...” Tsuzuki sobbed, his voice pitiful but suddenly more engaged, as if he was aware of what was going on. His fingers twitched, coming to life and managing to grab a drawer handle. Tatsumi reached for the blindfold, then snatched his hand back as if burned. No. Not until he could hold Tsuzuki in his arms.  
He pushed himself past Tsuzuki’s blindly rolling head and somehow made it round to the front of the desk. By the time he reached Tsuzuki, the younger shinigami had scrambled into a leaning position, his stiff and weakened wrists trembling as they supported his weight, knees looking as if they were about to buckle again. One hand jerked up towards his crooked blindfold but fell away, as if Tsuzuki’s circulation was still inadequate for the task. Congealing blood and fluid slid slowly from his back and dribbled down his legs.  
“Tsuzuki,” Tatsumi half-groaned, pulling the smaller shinigami into his arms, trying to somehow cradle his weight without aggravating the welts that mottled his back even now. As soon as he had Tsuzuki steady, he reached up to drag off the blindfold.  
Tsuzuki’s eyes were tight shut, tears leaking from the corners in two steady streams.  
“Asato!” Tatsumi heard himself shout, his remaining composure shattering.  
Tsuzuki did not respond. Tatsumi had the impulse to shake his lover, to force him back to life. Had Tsuzuki retreated inside himself again? Had Tatsumi sent him there? Had he so misjudged what Tsuzuki wanted?  
“Tatsumi...” said Tsuzuki weakly, as if from far away.  
“Yes,” said Tatsumi immediately. “Tsuzuki?”  
Slowly Tsuzuki opened his eyes. For a moment they stayed unfocused, then the huge, dark pupils began to contract, amethyst welling up around them like returning life.  
The body in Tatsumi’s arms was his Tsuzuki again. Blinking, Tsuzuki turned his head, as if unsure where he was. Then he looked up at Tatsumi, and his eyes widened with an expression of such trust and love that Tatsumi felt he’d grown about three feet in height. He felt himself smiling down at Tsuzuki, almost stupid with relief.  
“You’re here,” murmured Tsuzuki, pressing his head against Tatsumi’s chest. “Gods, you’re here.”  
“Well, yes,” said Tatsumi. He felt hands at his waist, taking hold, clinging to him, weak and shaky but determined. He could think of nothing else to say, so he simply kissed the soft hair of his lover’s crown and waited for Tsuzuki to continue.  
“I thought...” Tsuzuki paused for a sob. “I was afraid it was like before.”  
Like before? But it had been like before – the belt, the cries for mercy, the pain – and he had felt Tsuzuki’s pleasure and release, a deep abiding throb under the waves of anguish. The only difference was the penetration. Perhaps that was the problem? He had gone too far? Oh gods, he had gone too far.  
“I’m sorry,” Tatsumi said, trying to control his mortification. “I should not have taken advantage of you. I should not –”  
“No,” Tsuzuki interrupted him, and a note of humour in his shaky voice brought Tatsumi up short. “I didn’t mean that. Gods, yes, you took advantage of me, and I loved it, but –” another hitch in Tsuzuki’s voice, another change in tone. “I thought you’d gone. I thought I disgusted you and you’d... gone.”  
 _Like before._ And Tatsumi let himself understand.  
“Sssh,” he soothed, rocking Tsuzuki back and forth as the younger shinigami’s crying intensified again, the sounds jerky and uncontrolled with exhaustion. “I’m back now.”  
He knew he should apologise to Tsuzuki, but the simple word ‘sorry’ was not big enough for this. He could not go back forty years and pull Tsuzuki back into the apartment, tend to his wounds and explore with him the secret they had uncovered. He could not undo the years of absence, of the pretence that pain was not a price worth paying for life.  
“You sent me away,” Tsuzuki sobbed out. “You were holding me, and then I was in the street... and I felt like I’d died.”  
“I know,” Tatsumi murmured into his hair. Then suddenly he heard himself say the words, “I’m sorry.”  
While that might not be enough, he would not withhold it from Tsuzuki any more.  
Shakily, Tsuzuki lifted his head from Tatsumi’s chest and looked him in the face. Red streaks surrounded his amethyst irises now, and the skin around his eyes was swollen and tired, but he was beautiful to Tatsumi.  
“Thank you,” said Tsuzuki quietly, between sniffs.  
Tatsumi brought up a fingertip to gently trace the path of a tear.  
“I’m still not very manly, am I?” Tsuzuki ruefully tried to smile.  
Tatsumi smiled back and began gently to brush away the tears with his usual gesture. Tsuzuki followed his movement, and something in his expression, some infinitesimal tightening of the muscles around his eyes, made Tatsumi pause.  
“No, not this time,” he said, and brought his face level with Tsuzuki’s. He flicked his tongue out and slid it across the salty, heated planes of his lover’s cheeks, cushioning the tremors of his head, dissolving his bitter tears in hot kisses. Tsuzuki shut his eyes and whimpered with pleasure, his sobs finally easing.  
Gently nudging Tsuzuki to support his own weight for a moment, Tatsumi reached behind him and pulled Tsuzuki’s trenchcoat from its peg. Flinging the coat across the central expanse of the floor, he carefully lowered the both of them to lie on it, Tsuzuki still cradled in his embrace.  
“Thank you,” repeated Tsuzuki, snuggling into the crook of Tatsumi’s arm.  
“What for this time?” Tatsumi asked. The stem of his glasses caught in the cloth of Tsuzuki’s coat so he removed them and placed them beside his head.  
Tsuzuki waited for a sob to travel through him, then said. “For... seeing me like that and not hating me.”  
Staring at the fuzzy white blank of the ceiling, Tatsumi pictured Tsuzuki’s expression as it had been during the whipping. Redrawn from moment to moment as pain and relief possessed him in turn, it had been always utterly open and unguarded, focused utterly on the here and now, on Tatsumi. Fierce joy that he was the one who had been chosen to see this, that he was the one with the power to lift Tsuzuki out of the mire of his guilt and into this state of pure instinct, had gripped Tatsumi, driving him to a higher and higher pitch of excitement as Tsuzuki writhed and moaned under his hand.  
“Thank you for showing that to me,” said Tatsumi quietly.  
Tsuzuki gave a little wriggle, pressing his back against Tatsumi’s hand. The skin was smooth to the touch. “There won’t be anything to show at all in another half hour,” he said a little sadly. “Sometimes I hate being a shinigami. I wish I could wake up tomorrow wrapped in bruises from you. Then I’d still have a little piece of this, I’d know it’s real.”  
“It is real,” Tatsumi assured. But he thought of Tsuzuki waking alone in his messy flat, wondering if today had even happened, and his heart ached at the image.  
“I know,” said Tsuzuki quickly, his tone almost guilty. “And I don’t want to be ungrateful but, Tatsumi... will we do this again?”  
Tsuzuki shifted against his arm, and Tatsumi felt an intense gaze playing over his face, but he did not turn his head. He kept staring into the fuzzy white distance of the ceiling, hearing cries of pain, release and joy echo in his ears, feeling leather and hot flesh against his skin.  
“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to pressure you. We don’t have to do...” Tsuzuki faltered. “The belt... there’s other things you can... well, of course you know, you worked in that house. Oh Gods, Tsuzuki, you’re an idiot, shut up.”  
In the silence that followed, Tatsumi reached for Tsuzuki’s wrist. Gently he lifted it above his own torso, then brought it down towards his face, tightening his grip so that Tsuzuki gasped. Then he kissed Tsuzuki’s palm.  
“Yes,” he said, smiling against Tsuzuki’s soft skin. “We will do this again.”   
~~~~~  
Tatsumi had let go.  
He had never done such a thing before, had never imagined it was possible, but here he was, lying naked with Tsuzuki on the floor of the Kyushu office, blood and semen dried against their bodies. No-one had died. For a brief while, Tatsumi had relinquished his judgment to his emotions, and Meifu was still standing. Tsuzuki was in his arms, sleeping now, his breathing free from all but the faintest echo of tears.  
The outside world would be waiting for them. More than waiting: it would be standing on tiptoes at the far end of the corridor with its collective mouth hanging open and ears flapping. Even if Tatsumi had had the heart to wake Tsuzuki when lunchtime ended some time ago, even if they pulled on their clothes regardless of the mess underneath, the chaos of severed ties and creased shirts, not to mention the probably loosened legs on Tsuzuki’s desk, would tell a story. Tatsumi suspected that even the forms he’d worked on so desperately last night had ended up stained, or at least folded.  
It was unlikely anyone would guess exactly what had happened, but they would get close enough.  
 _Let them_ , thought Tatsumi then. If the entire Shokan division had materialised in front of him at that moment, he would simply have shadow-gagged the lot of them to ensure they did not wake Tsuzuki. But there was no danger of that, with shadows still sealing the room.  
Tatsumi had tied Tsuzuki to his own desk and beaten him with a leather belt, and he could not see what on earth or Meifu was wrong with that.  
Furthermore, Tatsumi mused, letting his thoughts glide where they willed, there was the interesting reflection that Tsuzuki was right. There were many things in the world besides belts, and Tatsumi wondered if Tsuzuki’s eyes would with light up with that same intoxicating mixture of fear and desire when he was bound to Tatsumi’s bed and introduced to them.  
He would have to find out.  
Drifting halfway into sleep, Tatsumi felt Tsuzuki’s deep, gentle breaths travelling through both of them before they were absorbed through Tsuzuki’s coat and into the floor, to disappear into the fabric of the building. Their feelings were connected to the wider world, and the world saw them, and gave its tacit approval.  
There was no more fear.   
~~~~~  
“Tatsumi?”  
He awoke suddenly. The world around him was blurred, but it was not the familiar blue wash of his bedroom wall.  
Tatsumi scrabbled around him for his glasses, his hand jarring against sparse carpet. Why was he lying on the floor? What floor of what room?  
“Tatsumi...” repeated the voice gently. His glasses appeared in front of him, attached to the fuzzy blob of a hand.  
Tsuzuki’s face and naked shoulder snapped into focus, and Tatsumi remembered.  
His heart leapt into his mouth for a moment, then settled as he realised Tsuzuki was smiling at him.  
 _You gave me your pain._  
Tsuzuki leant in for a brief kiss, but when he withdrew, his eyes were clouded and he bit his lip.  
“Hisoka,” he said.  
Tatsumi nodded. They got to their feet, and began to put themselves and the office back together.


	7. Chapter 7

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Actions have consequences, including a distraught Kurosaki Hisoka.

The fantasy was sickening. Tatsumi stripping Tsuzuki, binding him, whispering intimate obscenities as pain ripped through Tsuzuki’s naked body. All this Hisoka had pulled from Tsuzuki’s mind in one involuntary instant, and now the images repeated on endless loop as he raced through the corridors, into the library, up the stairs to his favourite table in the furthest corner of the upper gallery.  
 _Why, Tsuzuki? Why?_  
No answer. Just the stark horror of realisation played out again and again: _Tsuzuki desires this_. Not love. Not tenderness - from Tatsumi or anyone else. Grotesque abuse.  
 _“Well, look at this...”  
NO!_  
Hisoka half-flung himself into the plastic seat, drawing his arms up in front of his chest, ramming his knees together. His scars burned, but he would not be sucked back into his private terrors, he would not blur Tatsumi’s face with Muraki’s against a backdrop of endless sakura petals... Tsuzuki’s terrible lust brought back the humiliation of Muraki’s bondage at Nagasaki, the sick thrill of Saagatanus’ touch at Kumamoto. Hisoka’s nightmares... Tsuzuki’s dreams.   
_Why?_  
Because Tsuzuki was so consumed by self-hatred that he thought he deserved those things. At Shion Dai, Hisoka had held him tight in the heart of the fire, felt the tides of Tsuzuki’s will shift and change, and known that he was the one who had made his partner want to live. But why had he assumed that single act would be enough to heal a man who had tried to put his own eye out because he thought he was subhuman? Tsuzuki had been damaged long before Muraki came, and nothing had really changed for him. He still carried his burden of needless guilt. He still wanted to be punished.  
Hisoka slammed his forehead into the heels of his hands, and banged his elbows against the table, rattling it. He tried to breathe, to control the hot, bitter shame which constricted his throat. After Kyoto, he had been so sure that he would never leave Tsuzuki’s side again. If Tsuzuki’s sickness returned, they would face it together.   
So he had told himself. The reality was very different. How many times had he snapped at Tsuzuki, sneered at him, or simply sat back, complacent, assuming his ever-attentive partner could translate cold silence into affection? Quietly, uncomplainingly, Tsuzuki had absorbed every last bit of Hisoka’s bile, and this was the result.  
Now he had wasted his last chance to undo some of that damage. He should have dropped everything when he found out that Tatsumi had been violent. He should have taken Tsuzuki out somewhere, got him to talk, tried to offer help and understanding instead of fleeing like a coward.  
 _I’m so sorry I failed you!_ Hisoka cried so loudly in his own mind that he thought surely the words must carry to Tsuzuki across the mental connection they shared even at this distance. But all he could pick up from Tsuzuki was the meld of longing and fear that had dominated his mind since Hisoka left the office – except, no, there was a sudden quickening, a surge of excitement. Sick to his stomach, Hisoka realised what that meant: Tatsumi had agreed to co-operate with Tsuzuki’s desires.   
Help and understanding... Hisoka’s own words mocked him. Tsuzuki didn’t want those things, did he? He didn’t want to get well. No wonder he had turned to Tatsumi, who had caved in to his death wish at Kyoto and who never stood up to him when it really counted. Tsuzuki’s relationship with the shadowmaster stretched far back into the past, unknowable and threatening.   
Suddenly not even Hisoka’s self-disgust could drown out his rage. Tatsumi had seemed to be his friend, the one other person who cared about Tsuzuki as much as he deserved... but his actions in this were beyond forgiveness. Did he think Tsuzuki’s sickness could be appeased? Could he actually take some kind of twisted pleasure in the idea, like Tsuzuki himself? Hisoka grimaced wretchedly into his hands, wanting to rail at Tatsumi, _how can you hurt him, don’t you understand he’s sick?_  
Oh gods, what would Tatsumi do? He was a man, with a man’s body and a man’s strength. What if Tsuzuki changed his mind, wanted Tatsumi to stop? How would Tatsumi know he meant it? Would he have told Tatsumi to ignore his screams? Hisoka tried to picture the scene in his mind, Tsuzuki naked and strapped to a table, his body jerking grotesquely as Tatsumi flogged him with a horsewhip of the kind Hisoka had seen used in the village where he grew up. Tsuzuki was gagged, and Hisoka saw it all in perfect clarity: the knot of the handkerchief soaked with saliva, Tsuzuki’s eyes wide and glistening with regret and need only Hisoka could see.   
Hisoka shoved the side of his hand into his mouth to keep himself from crying out in the oblivious calm of the library because he was so damn scared for Tsuzuki, so worried and so helpless –and so utterly ashamed of the foolish fantasies that scrolled through his mind. He saw himself bursting back into the office, snatching the whip from Tatsumi, taking Tsuzuki into his arms and convincing him somehow, if only through simple force of feeling, that he did not have to do this, he did not deserve to be punished, he was wrong to try to heal pain with more pain. Tsuzuki wept and Hisoka promised to help him get better. Tatsumi... simply vanished.  
But that was not the reality. Instead of remorse, Hisoka was picking up waves of contentment from Tsuzuki. Nothing interfered with that, even though it was now edged with what Hisoka thought of as red static – the empathic signature of physical pain. If Hisoka had not known what was going on, he would have been enchanted by the wonderful sense of focus and peace flowing from his usually scatty partner. He would have sought Tsuzuki out, expecting some kind of marvellous news.  
But at this moment, Hisoka knew, he had no more relevance to his beloved friend than did the petals on the sakura outside their office window. Tsuzuki’s pleasure, however incomprehensible its origin, was real.  
No wonder he hadn’t seen this coming; Tsuzuki’s sickness ran so deep that even to Hisoka’s empathy it did not really seem like disease. It felt like an intrinsic part of him.

~*~

Hisoka was still sitting with his head in his hands when the peaceful hum of Tsuzuki’s feelings suddenly shifted key. The red edge of physical pain was fading, but so was the soft warmth of Tsuzuki’s contentment.   
Tatsumi was gone...  
Hisoka sat up, barely registering that he had jarred his elbow on the edge of the table. Tsuzuki was spiralling into panic, his emotions so strong that even at this distance they became actual thoughts. And Tsuzuki was terrified. Lost. Frozen. Abandoned...  
Fighting back towards his own consciousness, Hisoka caught the edge of the table, cursing himself for having this connection with a madman, for having empathy at all, for being such a worthless needy little shit that of course Tatsumi would never stay with him... No, that was Tsuzuki’s thought... oh gods...  
Hisoka succeeded in pulling away, but at the same time there was a strange, uneven guttering in the empathic signal, a dimming as if Tsuzuki’s mind was withdrawing into distance - or death. Tsuzuki was fading, falling away from him into the darkness. Hisoka stretched his arms out, unable to stop himself from trying to embrace a body which was not there.  
Then, such utter relief. Tatsumi was holding him, Tatsumi was...  
And Hisoka wrenched himself back.   
Why should he have to feel all this!?  
Hisoka could no more block his empathy than he could his hearing, but he focused it with all his might on the calm consciousness of the Younger Gushoshin, who was shelving books down on the main floor. Yet even through the filter of the librarian’s mind he could sense Tsuzuki’s rich satisfaction.   
With a whole new kind of horror, Hisoka realised he resented that comforting warmth. When he’d felt Tsuzuki’s desolation, in tandem with his panic a grotesque hope had flashed across his mind. For a moment he’d actually been excited by the thought that Tsuzuki was regretting his choice. Then he would be a mess after his traumatic time with Tatsumi, and Hisoka would be there to pick up the pieces.  
 _I’m so sorry I failed you._  
 _What did that mean?_  
Hisoka bent forward, listening to the distant singing of Tsuzuki’s emotions, and watched the drab grain of the table distort into tiny, curving patterns as drops of moisture splashed onto it, merging with their fellows or sitting apart to one side, as fate and physics chose.

~*~

Striding towards the front entrance, Tsuzuki glanced in the direction of the library wing.   
“Hisoka...” he murmured, his gaze softening and his steps slackening a little.  
“Home,” Tatsumi contradicted, continuing his former smart pace. “You should shower and change,” he continued quietly but firmly, not liking his sudden didactic tone but settling for it because it came so easily – and it worked, as Tsuzuki ran a little way to catch up with him. “Another few minutes on his own will upset Kurosaki-kun less than seeing you so untidy.”  
Tatsumi had got them this far by simply ignoring anyone and anything on their route to the open air, where they would be able to teleport home to clean up without setting off the alarms. However, that hadn’t stopped what seemed like half of Meifu eyeballing them with naked fascination as they passed. While the Kyushu area office had been easy enough to restore, their clothes and bodies had not. Tsuzuki’s trenchcoat was covering a lot, but even that was impressively creased up the back from its use as impromptu bedding. Tatsumi’s lack of a tie, their messy hair, Tsuzuki’s coat buttoned to the neck indoors... though these signs didn’t tell the full story, coupled with a two-hour lunchbreak in a sealed office they said enough.  
Tatsumi had braced himself for the stares and the whispering, but calculated that his reputation would be enough to keep people off their backs long enough to get them out of the building. He was right, except that he had not anticipated the nature of the reaction that they – or perhaps, more realistically, Tsuzuki – would get. Tatsumi sensed surprise, titillation, some disapproval, but primarily gladness.  
He should have known it. Tsuzuki was the most popular person in the department, yet he was so often sad, or artificially noisy, or buried in the attempt to cheer up somebody else. Today though he was glowing from the inside, his every movement expressing a new confidence.   
In a way, Tatsumi realised, Tsuzuki was showing him off. Perhaps he should have been horrified by that, but even under all those eyes the feeling wouldn’t come. It was worth a small bruise to his dignity to see the flushed, beloved face beside him and feel his own heart brag in spite of all his efforts at sobriety – _I made you happy. Look at you, you’re beautiful! And_ I _made you_ happy.   
Tatsumi would not be ashamed of that. Not again, not ever.  
It was a fool’s paradise, of course, this initial atmosphere of congratulation, but Tatsumi let Tsuzuki enjoy it. Things would sour soon enough when word got out, as it inevitably would in an office where parts of the rumour network were literally psychic.  
Tatsumi would cope with that when the time came. He wouldn’t even mind it for himself; everyone thought he was a sadistic bastard anyway. But for Tsuzuki... even as they walked the corridors bathed in those unexpected smiles, Tatsumi swore to himself, _judge him and I will destroy you._  
Finally they were out in the open air, their pace slowing to a standstill as yet another wide-eyed junior scurried past them into the building.  
“Well, then,” said Tatsumi, resisting the temptation to raise his hand and fiddle with the space where his tie had once been. “I need to go to my apartment, and you to yours, to get our own clothes,” he explained, to fill the sudden silence.  
“And then Hisoka,” said Tsuzuki. He looked at the ground, his hair falling down to obscure his face.   
“We could meet when we get back, and I could come with -” Tatsumi started.  
“No,” Tsuzuki cut him off. “That wouldn’t be good.”  
“No,” echoed Tatsumi quickly. “Of course you are right.”  
Tsuzuki poked a pebble with his toe. “I don’t know what to say to him, Tatsumi. Maybe there’s nothing I can say that wouldn’t be patronising. I fucked things up pretty badly. If he hates me, I deserve it.”  
“You do not,” said Tatsumi, turning his own eyes to the ground. He wanted so badly to say more, but even if he had had the words, he knew that if he stayed here any longer, he would not be able to leave at all.   
So much of his Tsuzuki’s pain was still beyond his control.  
But Tatsumi forced himself to look up again and smile, to show that if he was angry, it was not with Tsuzuki himself. Tsuzuki was smiling too, obviously wanting to reassure Tatsumi he would be all right.  
Time to let go. For now.  
Tatsumi looked at his watch. “I have to get back in time for a meeting,” he said. “After work, come to my office.”  
Tsuzuki nodded, and the shadows rose between them to carry Tatsumi away.

~*~

Tsuzuki waited for the shadows to dissipate before getting ready to teleport himself. Again he glanced past the sakura grove to the library wing. Through the window, a shape could be seen huddled at Hisoka’s favourite table.  
Oh gods, Hisoka was probably still mentally tuned in to Tsuzuki. He’d be able to tell what Tsuzuki was feeling, and whether he was near or far. If Tsuzuki left now, even for a few minutes...   
Tsuzuki hesitated, shifting from one foot to another. Tatsumi had been insistent...  
No, however right Tatsumi was about the prudence of going home and changing first, Tsuzuki could not leave his partner alone, trying to understand what had happened with only his own nightmare past to go by, for a moment longer.  
Wrapping his coat tightly around his body, Tsuzuki hurried towards the library wing.

~*~

Tsuzuki had just reached the library door when a small figure shoved through, almost colliding with him. He barely had a glimpse of a drawn, angry face, mouth tight and eyes shielded by a fall of blond hair, before Hisoka pushed past him, cutting across the lawn towards the main building.  
For a moment, Tsuzuki stood stunned.   
Hisoka had sensed him coming, and just wanted to get away.  
Cold with guilt, Tsuzuki watched his partner’s retreating back. He had been prepared to comfort, to explain... but now that seemed like arrogance next to the pure misery he had seen in his friend’s face. Perhaps he should respect that, and leave Hisoka alone?  
No. This stupid situation was entirely Tsuzuki’s fault. For not explaining things ahead of time, for letting lust take him over, for just being the fucking idiot that Hisoka rightly called him.   
So it was up to him to try and limit the damage.  
“Wait!” cried Tsuzuki, dashing after his partner. “Hisoka? Please, just look at me?” he begged as they came level with each other, hating the inadequacy of his words and even more bitterly hating the way he matched Hisoka’s half-run with easy strides.  
“Can I have my office back now?” Hisoka snapped, eyes fixed on the grass as he rushed on.  
Meaning, _have you finished using it as a knocking shop._   
“Yes,” Tsuzuki responded miserably. They were heading straight back to the main building, but for Hisoka’s sake Tsuzuki could not go back in there until he’d tidied himself up. People who had hung cautiously back from bothering Tatsumi would not do the same for himself and Hisoka.  
Gods, everything was going wrong. He should have listened to Tatsumi and gone home first – as if that would have made any difference...  
Any closer and they would be in earshot of the front entrance.  
“Hisoka...” Tsuzuki pleaded. “We should try to talk about this. Please!” He stopped where he was and reached out, wanting to pull Hisoka back, but only managed to brush the back of his jacket.  
It was enough to make Hisoka spin round. “Don’t touch me!” he hissed. “The last thing I need is more of your sick fantasies in my head.”  
For a split second their eyes met. Then Hisoka clutched at his elbows, hunching forward, forearms rammed together across the front of his jacket as if trying to hold himself in.  
“Hisoka...” whispered Tsuzuki, appalled.  
“I felt what you felt, alright?” snapped Hisoka, bending further forward as if in pain. “That’s what being an empath means!”  
“I’m sorry...” Tsuzuki mumbled, his mind racing. How could he have let his selfish happiness blind him to the torture he was inflicting on his best friend? The mess Tsuzuki’s emotions must have made when they mixed with Hisoka’s memories... And now it was too late. “I didn’t mean for you to...” Tsuzuki stumbled on. “Please, hate me if you want, I’ll understand. You can apply to have a new partner, I’ll get Tat... ask Konoe to see to it.”  
“Idiot!” Hisoka almost wailed. He looked up again, and Tsuzuki winced with shame at the fear and incredulous hurt that burned in his partner’s eyes. “I felt how happy you were, and I can feel it now, don’t you understand that? When are you going to get it into your thick skull that you can’t hide things from me and if something is that important to you how could I possibly...” Hisoka’s voice choked off.  
“You’re sick,” he resumed, looking away again, his voice shaky but suddenly calmer. “He’s exploiting you, and it’s wrong.”   
In the silence that followed, Tsuzuki let out a long breath. For a moment, he wished that he could say Tatsumi had abused him, that he really was sick, and needed Hisoka to help him. But he could not bring himself to lie.  
“You freaked out at one point, didn’t you,” Hisoka continued almost conversationally, turning back to Tsuzuki. “Why? Did he hurt you...” Hisoka’s face spasmed into a humourless grimace. “...more than you wanted?”  
“No,” said Tsuzuki as gently as he could, fighting back the temptation to add, _I’m sorry_. “It was just a bad memory. We did something similar in the past and it went wrong. We cleared that up today.”  
“Cleared it up?” echoed Hisoka, sounding bewildered. Then his expression hardened. “All right, we’ve been here long enough, people will be talking. I suggest we get back to work.”   
Tsuzuki smiled uncomfortably at the sudden change of subject, gesturing down at himself. “I have to nip home first. Change.”  
“Really,” said Hisoka tartly, looking Tsuzuki up and down. “I thought you might not care.”  
“I care,” said Tsuzuki softly, his heart aching. “About you.”  
“You might love him,” said Hisoka abruptly, “But he would’ve let you die at Kyoto.” A defiant tilt of his chin, and Hisoka was suddenly staring up at Tsuzuki again. “I would never do that. Ever. Just so you know.”  
Hisoka shrugged then, squaring his shoulders and turning away, his blond hair flashing in the sun. “Clean up, Tsuzuki. I’ll see you back in the office.”

~*~

At 3.59pm, Tatsumi picked up his bamboo projection pointer, smiled a little at the interesting images it sparked in his mind, tucked it into the binding of one of the folders he was carrying and set off to the briefing room.  
After cleaning up at home, he felt restored to life. His meeting with Konoe would not take long – he just had to run through a very simplified version of the month’s accounts and get them rubber stamped. Tonight, he would not even stay late.  
In the corridors people looked at him oddly, as they had done when he stopped by the break room to get a cup of coffee on his return. But they hadn’t held a naked, glowing Tsuzuki in their arms; they weren’t going to take Tsuzuki to dinner. And if any of them tried to cheek him for taking an extended lunch break, with the amount of overtime hours he put in...  
Still, even now a little voice at the back of his head kept up a quiet monologue. _It’s not the lunch break that will interest them... and what if I run into Hisoka?_  
But he made it to the briefing room unscathed, and was setting up the laptop for his Powerpoint presentation when he heard Konoe enter.  
“Kacho,” Tatsumi acknowledged, fiddling with the power cable for the hundredth time and wishing it was Watari’s neck. Damn it, the scientist had deliberately allocated Tatsumi the creakiest machine in the place, just to annoy him.  
“Tatsumi,” Konoe returned, sitting down heavily.  
“Problems?” said Tatsumi, without looking up from the recalcitrant laptop.  
“I’ve been stuck in the office all day writing up reports after the directors’ meeting,” Konoe harrumphed. “The others want to know just how the Kyushu shinigami get through quite so many resources.”  
Tatsumi rolled his eyes and switched to battery power. “I know the feeling. Don’t worry, I just dropped... got Tsuzuki to drop those forms in the mail tray.”  
“I really don’t think our Tsuzuki realizes what a budget is,” Konoe mused. As the laptop sputtered into life, Tatsumi glanced up and saw the old chief massaging his lined forehead.  
Meeting Tatsumi’s eyes, Konoe lowered his hand and slapped the palm against the table. “So I rang the Kyushu office and spoke to Kurosaki-kun. I invited him and Tsuzuki to join us in a few minutes.”  
“Tatsumi?” Konoe continued after a pause, raising his thick eyebrows. “Is there a problem?”


	8. Chapter 8

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Which is better, pretending problems don't exist or ripping open wounds?

For a long time after he finished cleaning himself up, Tsuzuki sat in his shirt and underpants, drinking tea, watching leaf-shadows move against his kitchen wall and trying to take in all that had happened.  
Tatsumi loved him. Tatsumi had beaten him, and held him, and promised more in a voice that made Tsuzuki’s heart leap and his spine tingle. He wanted to shout to the world about it, whatever they thought. And he wanted to share his happiness with his best friend.  
Selfish of him to wish that, when it could only bring Hisoka pain. Selfish to even let Hisoka know what was going on – as if you could possibly avoid that with an empath.  
Tsuzuki had expected his partner to be shocked, of course he had, and yet... until he saw the fright and revulsion etched into Hisoka’s face as he hunched over outside the library, it hadn’t been quite real.  
Perhaps Tsuzuki had let himself believe that, like Watari, Hisoka must have somehow guessed his tastes a long time ago. As if Hisoka had anything in common with Watari. In fact he was more like Tatsumi. When Tsuzuki and Watari started making smutty jokes in the break room, Hisoka and Tatsumi were the ones who would stalk out.  
Tsuzuki knew so very well what had made each of them so uncomfortable with sex. Tatsumi might not feel that way after today. But Hisoka...  
I didn’t mean to hurt you.  
Too fucking late.  
Tsuzuki knew he had to go back to the office and try to pick up the pieces, but he wasn’t sure if he even had the right. Perhaps the trust between them was so damaged that when he walked through the door Hisoka would simply ignore him.  
Or his presence might only hurt Hisoka more, as he leaked excitement and lust in spite of himself. Why did the things Tsuzuki wanted have to look like the very act that had ruined Hisoka’s life?  
But Tsuzuki could not find in himself the desire to change. At Kyoto, he had let the force of Hisoka’s emotion carry him along when he’d thought he was determined to die. And he knew all Hisoka wanted was to save him this time, too.  
But Tatsumi was not suicide.  
Setting his cup quietly on the table, Tsuzuki reached back, twining his arms through the wooden struts behind him . He arched his neck and imagined Tatsumi’s hand gripping his hair, Tatsumi’s lips sliding up his neck as the words, Tatsumi’s real words from that afternoon, echoed in his ears: I want to hurt you more.  
“Please,” murmured Tsuzuki, twisting in his imaginary bonds as if to press towards his lover. He shivered, closing his eyes and letting delicious memories scroll across his vision as the last echoes of soreness twinged in his back. At the same time, the thought surfaced clear and cold in his mind: I can’t give this up. I can’t pretend to regret this. Not even for Hisoka.  
Slowly Tsuzuki unwound his arms from the chair and leant forward against the table, resting his chin on this thumbs, steepling his fingers against his mouth as he gazed out at the leaf-shadows, which hung motionless now against the wall.  
Am I losing my best friend?  
He sat quietly for one more minute, trying to gather his wits, to make himself into someone who neither Tatsumi or Hisoka would be ashamed to be associated with.  
There was an hour left of the working day. He would return to the office, and face whatever he found. Then, and only then, he would leave everything else behind and spend the evening with Tatsumi.

~*~

A few miles away, Hisoka sat alone in the quiet of the Kyushu office, staring at his partner’s desk, where the usually chaotic drifts of paper stood in rough stacks and handprints showed in the dust that topped the monitor.  
He might never understand why, but on that bare wooden surface, Tsuzuki and Tatsumi had done what they had done, and it had made Tsuzuki happier than Hisoka had ever known him to be. On the lawn, even as Tsuzuki’s surface feelings saddened and dimmed, Hisoka had felt that underlying glow, as if the real Tsuzuki was drifting away to some impossible state of bliss where Hisoka could not reach him.  
Tatsumi had taken him to that place, and it was Tatsumi he loved.  
Perhaps Hisoka should simply go; resign from the division and leave them to enjoy this terrible intimacy that make Hisoka ill to even contemplate.  
It was not even the first time something like this had happened. Tsuzuki had said as much, though things had gone “wrong” before – which was little surprise to Hisoka because he knew that, in spite of everything, Tatsumi was a decent man who loved Tsuzuki. He’s exploiting you, Hisoka had claimed on the lawn, but in reality it was always Tsuzuki who manipulated Tatsumi. Perhaps after so many years Tatsumi had lost hope of a normal relationship and forced himself to embrace Tsuzuki’s sickness as the only way to be close to him.  
Hisoka could never do that.  
As if it mattered: Tsuzuki would never ask him.  
On the way back to the office, Hisoka had passed people who averted their eyes from him, their emotions a mixture of pity and titillation. They thought Tsuzuki and Tatsumi had been making love in here. Hisoka knew otherwise, but he would respect Tsuzuki’s dignity and privacy even if Tsuzuki did not understand the need to do that himself. It was unbearable to think of throwing Tsuzuki open to the judgement of people who did not care about him. It was so easy to imagine – some idiot like Terazuma calling Tsuzuki sick, and Tsuzuki falling silent, sad and answerless, as he had on the lawn.  
At least Tatsumi was bound to be discreet. Hisoka would be surprised if he even emerged from his office for the next few days: he would surely be sickened by what he’d done, no matter how much Tsuzuki had wanted it. And things would calm down. Now that Tsuzuki was happy, he wouldn’t feel the need for punishment for a while. Perhaps the effects would last months, or even years. Hisoka was certain nothing else like this had happened in his time at the division.  
Seeing Tsuzuki outside the library, for a moment he had been surprised that his friend still looked the same. He was not deformed or diminished, and the horror of what he had done was not stamped in his face.  
Hisoka clung to that unexpected relief as a sliver of hope. If this had been going on for years, then some kind of normality, like they had had before, might still be possible. Perhaps when Tsuzuki charged up the corridor, making enough noise for five in his usual fashion, there would still be some connection between them. Hisoka would still be useful as a source of subsidised pastries and correctly completed paperwork. There might be nothing else left for them, but office life would go on.  
But he doesn’t need me for anything that matters.  
That was the centre of the pain. Tsuzuki didn’t even want to be saved. There was nothing Hisoka could not forgive, would not try to help with, but he couldn’t do that if Tsuzuki was not willing.  
Hisoka had his forearms flat against the arms of the chair, hands gripping the plastic tight. Just for a second, he imagined he was bound there – until the thought chilled him and he pulled his arms up, relieved at the movement.  
There had been no satisfaction in the idea. If it were reality it would simply make him feel scared and vulnerable. And as for pain, anyone who tried to hurt Hisoka would get the same and more done right back to them.  
No answers. There was only the stillness of the office and the tick of the clock.  
The clock told him that Tsuzuki was not coming back. Not even his idiot partner could take this long to change his clothes and teleport.  
The phone rang on Tsuzuki’s desk.  
Hisoka ran to grab it, but it was only Konoe.  
“Ah, Kurosaki. Is Tsuzuki there?”  
“Tsu- Tsuzuki’s gone to lie down,” Hisoka stammered out the first excuse he could think of. “Stomach ache. He’s overdone it on the Cinnabons again.” Hisoka let the familiar weary impatience flood his tone and somehow his own voice comforted him, as if what he said was true and everything was normal. But Konoe continued without missing a beat.  
“Stomach ache,” he snorted. “He’d better get over it quickly. I want to see both of you in the briefing room in ten minutes. I need Tatsumi to show him the month-end figures.”

~*~

“Tatsumi,” Konoe’s voice was testy. “You’re going to tear the screen.” For a moment, Tatsumi did not understand what was meant. Then he caught sight of the laptop and pulled his arm abruptly back. A small indentation remained in the liquid crystal display where he had been pressing his pointer against it.  
“I apologise, Konoe-kacho,” said Tatsumi as calmly as he could. He would be able to concentrate better if Tsuzuki and Kurosaki would just get here, so he could see Tsuzuki again and know that his meeting with his partner had gone, if not all right, then at least bearably.  
“I am perhaps a little preoccupied,” Tatsumi continued, trying to keep his voice even, though he could feel the last of his good mood dissolving as the familiar sensation of worry welled up behind it like damp coming through wallpaper.. “Would you like me to repeat that last –”  
“No, no,” Konoe dismissed. “We might as well wait for the others. They’re due any moment.”  
“I know,” said Tatsumi, far more sharply than he had meant to. The chief gave him an odd look.  
Tatsumi carefully laid the pointer beside the laptop and breathed in deeply. He shut his eyes and put a hand up to rub them behind his glasses. Images of Tsuzuki - naked, screaming, laughing - ghosted over the flickering colours behind his eyelids.  
Please, thought Tatsumi, breathing out gently as he let his glasses fall back into position. When you come through that door, be smiling.  
But when the door creaked and he opened his eyes, all he saw was the pale, anxious face of Hisoka.

~*~

Hisoka rounded a corner – and suddenly there was Tatsumi, clearly visible through the internal window of the meeting room. Back straight, brown suit immaculate, he stood at the head of the table, his voice a low murmur through the thin wall as he spoke to someone unseen.  
Neither his face nor the smooth surface of his shielded mind betrayed anything negative – though perhaps there was a slight tightness around his eyes.  
As Hisoka took a step forward, the secretary raised his hand and rubbed his face behind his glasses, as if he were tired.  
Just for a moment Hisoka let himself give in to the same irrational relief that he’d felt when he faced Tsuzuki across the lawn. The fact that Tatsumi was not hiding away, as Hisoka had assumed he would be, was unexpectedly welcome. Whatever he had done and whatever the reason behind it, Tatsumi hadn’t changed into a monster.  
Hisoka would not have to hate his friend, the man Tsuzuki loved. Perhaps, somehow, life could go on.  
If only that idiot Tsuzuki would come back.  
Well, there was no help for it; Hisoka was going to have to cover for his partner yet again. He sighed and pushed open the door.  
“I’m sorry, Konoe-kacho,” he said. “It seems I can’t find Tsuzuki.”  
As he entered the room he felt Tatsumi’s gaze on him and knew without the need for empathy that he was not the one Tatsumi had wanted to see. That was hardly unexpected, and yet it wrongfooted Hisoka’s tolerant mood.  
What made Tatsumi so sure that Tsuzuki hadn’t had a change of heart, and still wanted to see him? And shouldn’t Tatsumi be relieved to know Hisoka was not out denouncing him around the building?  
As he sat down, Hisoka kept his eyes carefully trained on the chief, who faced him across the table, frowning in exasperation.  
“I thought you said he’d gone to lie down,” Konoe grumbled.  
“He did,” Hisoka hedged. “He must have felt really ill and gone home. I-”  
“Kurosaki-kun, I take it that Tsuzuki-san has spoken with you?”  
There was an edge of sharpness in Tatsumi’s clear, authoritative voice as it cut into the exchange. Hisoka detected concern in the secretary’s tone, but not the uncertainty he had expected, and with another twinge of resentment he realised why: “talking to Hisoka” must be something Tatsumi and Tsuzuki had arranged between them.  
He was a problem to be managed.  
Fuck this. What did Tatsumi want him to say, in front of Konoe? “Don’t worry, I didn’t manage to cure him?” “I was delighted to discover that he enjoys being tortured and humiliated and that you’re willing to do it to him?”  
“Briefly,” Hisoka responded. It was all he could think of to say.  
“I see,” Tatsumi replied. Finally Hisoka looked up at him, and glimpsed a genuine, questioning anxiety in his eyes. Hisoka let nothing show in his own face; not with Konoe sitting opposite.  
Then Tatsumi dropped his gaze to his laptop and shifted from one foot to the other. He didn’t seem to want to sit down. Was he too tense?  
Was he beginning to wonder if he’d done the right thing after all?  
“Tsuzuki’s very ill,” observed Hisoka, suddenly wanting more evidence of Tatsumi’s discomfort. He didn’t care if it was selfish or insensitive, he had to see Tatsumi’s remorse, to know that the world still made some kind of sense.  
But Tatsumi did not respond as Hisoka had expected. He looked up sharply, his hand curling tightly around the top bar of a chair. “And you are qualified to make that diagnosis?” he inquired coldly.  
Before Hisoka could reply to that, Konoe cut in. “Don’t blame Kurosaki,” he cautioned Tatsumi as he began to gather his papers together. “If Tsuzuki’s eaten himself sick again it can’t be helped. Call him to your office tomorrow and show him the figures then.”  
Tatsumi nodded acknowledgement, looking away from Hisoka. He reached up to nudge his glasses in his characteristic gesture, and for a moment Hisoka was caught by a flash of memory – pale fingers adjusting the frames on the cruel, intelligent face that hung over him, readying itself for torture and the slow kill.  
Hisoka’s mindless, treacherous flesh had crawled with pleasure when that hand moved down to touch him, even as pain and horror overwhelmed his conscious thoughts. Had Tatsumi’s hands brought the same sensation as they moved across Tsuzuki’s body, binding and tormenting? But there had been so much pleasure in Tsuzuki’s mind – the analogy between Tatsumi and Muraki would not gel.  
And yet, as Hisoka followed the lowering of Tatsumi’s hand, he glimpsed something discolouring the inner ring of Tatsumi’s belt buckle, a dull smear in the surrounding polished metal.  
Blood.  
Hisoka gasped. He hated himself for the stupid, reflexive little sound, but it was too late.  
Konoe paused in his paper-shuffling. Tatsumi homed in on Hisoka too, with urgent warning in his eyes.  
“Kurosaki-kun,” he rapped. “If you –”  
“Tatsumi, why?”  
The question burst out of Hisoka in a voice he barely recognised. The sound seemed not to fade from the air like normal speech, but to hang between them, creating a zone of stopped time, a brief world where Hisoka would be Tatsumi’s equal.  
The shadowmaster did not seem to feel it. He merely stiffened still further, and spoke with marble calm.  
“This is not the place for a discussion.”  
“Tatsumi and Kurosaki!” Konoe barked. “I am not senile yet, you know! Kindly explain what is going on!”  
But Hisoka could not give Konoe, or even Tatsumi, his attention. At the edge of his mind, he felt the brightly coloured hum of a familiar connection.  
Tsuzuki had just teleported in, and was heading this way.

~*~

Tsuzuki scurried through the lobby, grinning obligingly at a woman who tried to engage him in conversation, but not stopping or allowing a word to pass his lips. Once the woman was gone, he kept his eyes straight ahead.  
He was heading up the main artery of the division, towards his own office, when the door of the meeting room opened – and Hisoka stepped out.  
Tsuzuki slowed and stopped, trying to focus his thoughts on calm and to promise without words that he would control his emotions and not subject Hisoka to anything painful.  
It seemed to work. Or at least Hisoka just stood there and stared, his adam’s apple twitching very slightly as he held his chin high.  
Tsuzuki took a deep breath and smiled timidly. It’s just me, Hisoka, he thought, and tried to somehow shape his feelings around those words.  
Hisoka seemed to relax ever so slightly, but only far enough to snap “Idiot!”  
“Um... perhaps we should talk?” suggested Tsuzuki.  
“Now??” Hisoka scowled. His eyes flicked back towards the meeting room.  
Tsuzuki realised some of his partner’s awkwardness was coming from their very public location. Of course. They could hardly have a heart to heart in the central corridor. Damn, damn, damn. Why hadn’t he come back earlier?  
“You’re late!” Hisoka scolded, much more loudly. “I told you when Konoe wanted us here.”  
“Um, yes,” Tsuzuki said loudly, playing along as he trawled his memory in vain for recollection of a scheduled meeting. He peered through the internal window of the briefing room – shit, it looked like Konoe was waiting for him.  
And Tatsumi was there too. Standing at the head of the table, bending over the overhead projector as he connected it to the laptop, he squinted down at the machinery as if his life depended on his powers of concentration.  
A chill stream of hurt ran down Tsuzuki’s spine, but even as it shivered through him, he understood. Whatever the hell was going on, the situation must be delicate. Tatsumi was doing the sensible thing by acting normally, and Tsuzuki would not let him down.  
“Coming, Konoe-kacho!” Tsuzuki put on his most ingratiatingly inane smile and scurried after Hisoka into the meeting

~*~

Although Tsuzuki was now just yards away in the corridor, Tatsumi did not let himself look up. That would be asking for trouble. One economical movement after another was the way to get through this last hour of the day; then there would be time alone.  
If only... if only they could have had even one evening together before they had to face it all. A forced meeting with Kurosaki would deny them even that breathing space.  
Still, Tatsumi realised as he tried to concentrate on connecting the laptop to the projector, it would be pointless and perhaps even cruel to be angry with Kurosaki himself. It was inevitable the boy would assume abuse. Tatsumi himself had spent decades trying to believe the same thing, and he did not have Kurosaki’s miserable history.  
And yet, after he had finally overcome his own stupidity, to see his delusions resurrected in Kurosaki was hard to bear. Not for himself – no accusation the outside world could level at Tatsumi would match the things he had whispered to himself in the decades-long silence of his own mind – but for Tsuzuki.  
Tsuzuki was not a child. Much as Tatsumi wanted to protect him, he could not hide from Tsuzuki the things people would say and possibly do if they found out the truth.  
Fortunately, Konoe seemed simply to have subsided into a condition of testy resignation even before Kurosaki had blurted “Tsuzuki’s back” and rushed out of the room. If Tatsumi were in the chief’s place, he would have promised dire disciplinary action against all concerned if an explanation were not offered on the spot.  
The door opened then, and Tatsumi automatically glanced up to see Kurosaki marching back in. His face grim, he reseated himself opposite Konoe and fixed his eyes on the corridor over the chief’s shoulder as if it were the most fascinating sight in Meifu.  
After a few seconds, Tsuzuki came scurrying in after him. He was smiling broadly after Kurosaki, but Tatsumi winced to see his face was empty of the light that had suffused it earlier.  
“I’ve messed things up, haven’t I.” Tsuzuki grimaced at Konoe. He rattled off his usual comedic apologies for lateness, then stood on one foot, grinning nervously while the chief grumbled at him. For a second, his gaze bounced off Tatsumi, and a plea flickered through his eyes.  
“Tsuzuki-san,” Tatsumi acknowledged aloud, nodding politely when what he really wanted was to answer that plea by pushing past Konoe’s hunched back to pin Tsuzuki against the wall and kiss him very firmly, until he forgot about playing the fool to meet other people’s stupid expectations.  
We’ll be out of here soon, I promise.  
His ritual completed, Tsuzuki pulled out the seat at the opposite end of the table from Tatsumi, but Konoe immediately growled at him –  
“Sit closer to the whiteboard! This is for your benefit.”  
Tsuzuki came round behind Kurosaki, who had stiffened and scowled at Konoe’s words, and took the seat closest to Tatsumi. As he sat down, a strand of hair fell into his eyes and Tatsumi longed to brush it away – but Tsuzuki hastily did the job himself, his eyes sad and cautious as he flicked the barest glance in the direction of his partner.  
Behind Tsuzuki, Kurosaki sat scowling at the corridor wall.  
“We’d better get on with this,” prompted Tsuzuki brightly. “I’m sure Tatsumi’s very busy.”  
His imitation of childish obliviousness was distressingly accurate. But it was just that, an imitation, as it always had been.  
And the prompt was just what Tatsumi had needed, of course.  
He took a deep breath, sliding into his own role of the stern secretary.  
“Konoe-kacho has asked me to show you these figures,” he began, and the calm severity of his own tone grounded him a little. “The idea is for you to see your particular contribution to our deficit, in context.”  
Tsuzuki nodded obediently. “I know I’m a problem,” he admitted ruefully.  
Behind him, Kurosaki snorted and rolled his eyes at the understatement.  
“That is not helpful!” Tatsumi rapped out before he could stop himself. “Kindly be still.”  
An excruciating silence settled. Even Konoe stopped shuffling his papers and looked wonderingly at Tatsumi. Kurosaki himself flushed a deep, angry red and changed from staring out into the corridor to staring at his arms, which were folded on the table in front of him.  
Tatsumi felt Tsuzuki’s gaze on him, urgent and pleading.  
“My apologies, Kurosaki-kun,” he managed to say calmly. “Your frustration is understandable. I merely wish this meeting to be constructive,” he paused. “Therefore, as Tsuzuki-san suggests, I will begin. If you will all turn your attention to these figures, which represent the expenditure in district one for the month ending…”  
As he began to methodically work his way across the row of columns which was projected onto the whiteboard behind him, Tatsumi felt a little calmer. For a while he would be able to rest, suspended in a matrix of knowable mathematical constants, avoiding the temptation of eye contact with Tsuzuki.  
However, when he reached the figures for the tenth district, the data disappeared under the shadow of his hand. Leaning to the side he plucked his pointer up from beside the laptop and indicated his material with that.  
He glanced quickly over to check his audience was following him – and saw Tsuzuki’s face transformed by a beautiful, rapt, dirty smile.  
Mesmerised, Tatsumi followed the line of Tsuzuki’s gaze, to his own hand and the supple bamboo cane it held. Damn it. He should never have brought this thing from his office.  
Yet it made Tsuzuki smile like that. He was biting his lip now to try and keep his features in check, but desire spread across them like the sun welling out from behind clouds. His violet eyes sparkled, and one of his index fingers, unconsciously or not, moved to trace a line across the palm of the other hand.  
Tatsumi’s pants became suddenly constricting. The stem of the pointer felt hot in his grasp. He remembered the sound of bamboo striking skin, the spark in Tsuzuki’s eyes in the fraction of a second when he realised what was coming.  
With a feeling of fatal relief, Tatsumi felt a tender, hungry smile transforming his own face.  
Whatever you are dreaming about, my wayward one, he promised with his eyes as a delicious blush crept up Tsuzuki’s cheeks, I will make it come true in excruciating detail.  
“What is the matter?” Konoe asked then, in a strangely hesitant voice. Tatsumi looked over at him – but his quick assurance died on his lips as he saw Konoe was attending not to him, but to Kurosaki.  
The little empath was clutching his elbows tightly as he pressed them down into the table. His face was an even brighter red than earlier, a map of rage and mortification as tears coursed down to drip onto the table.  
Tsuzuki put an arm around his shoulder, but he seemed not to notice as he met Konoe’s gaze, his lips moving soundlessly as if he was trying to articulate something beyond expression.  
“Perhaps –” Tatsumi tried to begin, but Kurosaki’s eyes swivelled towards him, and their naked depths of rage and confusion stalled Tatsumi into silence.  
When the empath spoke, his voice was a wail of hostile misery.  
“You raped him!  
He hadn’t truly meant it – rape had nothing to do with the feelings he’d picked up from Tsuzuki that lunchtime – but it was the only word Hisoka could find that drew together all the bile and misery inside him.  
For a few seconds after he cried out, all he felt was liberation and a savage release as he saw Tatsumi stall, for once in his life at a complete loss, a protest dying on his lips. But then came the cold drench of Tsuzuki’s shock as he shrank back, physically and emotionally. Forgetting Tatsumi for a moment, Hisoka turned, instinctively following the warmth of the arm that had lifted from his shoulders. Tsuzuki was pressed against the far side of his seat, his eyes wide and dark with hurt, making Hisoka’s heart contract with guilt.  
“It wasn’t rape,” said Tsuzuki, in a quiet, hoarse voice, as if his throat was dry. “I’m so sorry if I made you think that.”  
The words hit Hisoka like a fist. He had braced himself for pain and protest but this... this was worse. Because Tsuzuki’s gentle rebuff was the truth, and Hisoka had walked right into it.  
As if he’d had had anywhere else to go.  
“Don’t try to put me in the wrong!” Hisoka cried, fighting to stifle the shame of his blunder. He watched Tsuzuki’s profile intently as his partner stared fixedly at his hands, livid points of colour rising to his cheek. “He tied you to a desk and beat you with his belt! All he does is hurt you!”  
“Kurosaki, I insist –” Hisoka heard Konoe’s astonished voice from across the table, but the chief’s words were drowned out by a yell from Tatsumi.  
“That is ENOUGH!” the shadowmaster roared. Hisoka looked up and saw him leaning forward, hands resting palms down, eyes sparking with fury. “This is not your concern!”  
“Tsuzuki’s my partner!” Hisoka yelled back defiantly. He matched Tatsumi’s posture as the shadowmaster faced him across the table. But almost immediately his attention was yanked away as Tsuzuki murmured beside him, “Don’t blame Tatsumi. Please.”  
“Then whose fault is it?” Hisoka demanded.  
“It’s not like that!”  
The words seemed to be torn from Tsuzuki as he jerked backwards in his seat. For a few seconds he met his partner’s gaze full on, and defiance burned clearly behind the pain in his eyes.  
In shock, Hisoka drew back. “I’m sorry,” he blurted, trying to take in what had happened. Tsuzuki - patient, diffident Tsuzuki - was angry. Not with some murderer or demon; with him.  
Tsuzuki pressed his splayed fingers to his forehead as if to push his emotions back inside.  
“I shouldn’t have snapped at you,” he apologised. “I’m sorry. If this is anyone’s fault, it’s mine. I’ve fucked this up. I’ve been a coward, I’ve hidden things. It didn’t seem to matter because I didn’t think Tatsumi would ever want.... again...” Tsuzuki shook his head, the tense muscles around his eyes relaxing for a moment as he lowered his hand and glanced across the table.  
“But he does,” said Tsuzuki, turning back to Hisoka and swallowing against the sudden tremor in his voice. “And it’s so... but I’m hurting you, and I don’t know what to do.”  
“I want you to be happy,” Hisoka half-whispered. He felt strangely light, as though something was unwinding inside him, stretching away towards a goal that outstripped his conscious mind.  
Tatsumi loved Tsuzuki, and desired his pain. What they’d done together hadn’t been mistaken kindness on Tatsumi’s part or temporary madness on Tsuzuki’s. They’d both gone into it willingly, and they wanted to do it again. It was impossible... but it was real.  
And here, in the present moment, was another strange reality: Tsuzuki is angry with me.  
That should have been the final catastrophe. Yet it didn’t feel that way.  
“I am happy,” Tsuzuki promised. He had to wipe his eyes then, giving a wry, apologetic little smile as if to disown the action, but for once his mannerisms failed to infuriate Hisoka.  
“You’ve changed,” said Hisoka, and for a moment he barely knew what he meant himself, but then he realised: there was a certainty to Tsuzuki, a solidity, as if something had anchored him deep inside himself. “You’re not fucking… hiding from me.”  
Tsuzuki seemed surprised and was about to speak, when something blocked the light. Hisoka glanced up – and saw that it was Tatsumi. He’d come up to stand behind Tsuzuki’s chair, and laid a hand on his shoulder.  
That hand was trembling slightly  
“Hey,” said Tsuzuki gently, craning his head back. “This isn’t like you.”  
Tatsumi smiled with excruciating awkwardness. He hung over his former partner for an endless second, and then suddenly, with an infinitesimal hesitation half way, he bobbed down and kissed Tsuzuki on the lips.  
Tsuzuki grinned shyly then, ducking his head for a moment, and sent out a wave of pleasure that filled Hisoka’s mind.  
“I find things of this nature… difficult,” said Tatsumi as he pulled back. “But we are together in this, Asato.”  
“I know,” said Tsuzuki quietly. He shot a glance at Hisoka then, playful and joyful and pleading all at the same time, and Hisoka found himself smiling back as a strange, irrational gladness bubbled up in his chest.  
“Well,” Tsuzuki continued lightly. “I guess someone can put up with my weird ways.”  
His tone was casual, but there was a catch in his voice as he spoke the word someone, and for a moment it made Hisoka stiffen and bristle again, afraid he was being mocked. But Tsuzuki’s expression was calm now, his emotions almost veiled again, so Hisoka glanced up at Tatsumi, and was amazed to see the shadowmaster regarding him intently, his face drawn with concern.  
Apparently Tsuzuki wasn’t going to abandon him, nor did Tatsumi hate him. They just wanted a sign that he hadn’t meant his outburst – the things he would never have said at all if fear hadn’t got the better of him.  
“I can put up with you!” he protested; then he foundered, confused by his own clumsy expression, even as he saw a smile beginning to light up Tsuzuki’s face. “What I mean is...” he tried to explain – but a new voice interrupted him.  
“If you’ve all finished shouting and displaying yourselves, I’d like an explanation.”  
Hisoka spun round in his chair, realising as he moved who it was that had spoken. Konoe. They had completely forgotten about him.  
The chief met Hisoka’s eye as if tacitly commiserating with him. But Hisoka could only stare back in shock. Konoe’s mind, which he had been utterly ignoring while he concentrated on Tsuzuki, was crawling with revulsion.  
“While there is nothing in the shinigami code which forbids association between members of the same gender,” the chief continued coldly. “I can’t ignore this.”  
“Kacho,” began Tatsumi “If you would allow me to -”  
The old man’s mouth pursed at Tatsumi’s words, and he raised a silencing hand.  
“It doesn’t matter that they’re gay!!!” Hisoka exclaimed then, unable to contain his astonishment.  
“Kurosaki, I’m old.” Konoe got heavily to his feet and gathered his papers, avoiding eye contact. “Don’t expect me to take on new ideas.”  
“Tatsumi,” he added coldly. “You are the senior employee. I’ll see you in my office.” And he lumbered out of the room.


	9. Chapter 9

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Tatsumi and Tsuzuki start to live again, as far as shinigami can

Tsuzuki and Hisoka sat on the grass in a far corner of the grounds, soaking up the early evening sunshine.  
Tsuzuki had wanted to get his partner away from the press of minds in the JuOhCho building, and out here the colour was slowly returning to Hisoka’s cheeks. He was toying with a blade of grass, but would not make eye contact, so Tsuzuki forced himself to wait, to lie on his back and watch the slow drift of the clouds.  
He’d wanted to go with Tatsumi to the chief’s office, but Tatsumi wouldn’t hear of it.  
“I am the one who works directly with Konoe-kacho,” Tatsumi had said, his face and voice hardening even as he spoke. “And I am the one he summoned. I will see you at my apartment in half an hour.”   
Tsuzuki just managed to nod before Tatsumi turned and swept out of the room. Difficult as it was to see him go, Tsuzuki knew he had to think about Hisoka.  
“Come on,” he said, gently nudging his partner’s arm as he stood pale and stunned, staring at the open door. “Fresh air, I think.” To his relief, Hisoka nodded, stirring into life.  
As they hurried down the corridor together, it was clear that the drama had not gone unheard. Eyes stared at them from behind glass-panelled doors, and Terazuma was slouching against a wall.   
“Wow,” he muttered. “You’re even worse than I thought.”   
Tsuzuki slowed down, but before he could think of a retort, Terazuma subsided. Looking round, Tsuzuki saw that Wakaba had appeared in the mouth of the door opposite, glaring knives at her partner - though she avoided Tsuzuki’s eyes. Only Watari, breezing across their path by apparent coincidence, gave Tsuzuki a giant grin and a thumbs up.  
Eventually they reached the main doors.  
“Do you want to go straight home?” Tsuzuki asked, steeling himself for a cold _yes_ , but to his relief it didn’t come.  
“No.” Hisoka avoided Tsuzuki’s eyes, but he didn’t sound hostile. “Let’s sit,” he suggested suddenly.  
“All right,” agreed Tsuzuki readily, and steered them out onto the lawn and around the corner of the building, heading for the gentle slope at the base of the outer fence. He looked round several times, but nobody came after them.  
That had been some time ago, and still Hisoka hadn’t spoken. In a situation like this, Tsuzuki would usually do something annoying, just to get a reaction, but today... no, not today.  
Yet he also knew that the time Tatsumi had set for them to meet was fast approaching. It was hard not to fixate on what Tatsumi and Konoe might be saying – and start giving out panic vibes that Hisoka would be sure to pick up on.  
Lying on the ground next to Hisoka’s turned back, Tsuzuki sneaked a look at his watch.  
“You’re worried about him,” Hisoka stated then.  
Tsuzuki sat up hastily. A cheerful brush-off rose to his lips, then died as he remembered that wasn’t how he did things any more.  
“Yes,” he admitted simply. “He... asked me to wait at his apartment.”  
“So you have to go,” replied Hisoka. He threaded a blade of grass through the bow of his shoelace.  
“For now,” conceded Tsuzuki. He wanted to say so much more, but his head seemed to be empty and full at the same time, as if everything in there had fused into an insoluble mass, and picking out a single thought would be impossible. “I’ll be on time for work tomorrow,” he blurted then, and it seemed such a ridiculous thing to say, but also somehow so comforting, as if Hisoka was sure to understand.  
Hisoka raised his head, staring straight ahead, and for a moment his mouth moved silently. When he finally spoke, the words came in a rush.   
“I’m sorry I’ve made things difficult for everyone and I don’t agree with the chief at all, but I still think you’re ill. I’d be lying if I said otherwise.”  
“I know you do,” responded Tsuzuki, trying to keep his voice calm, though he felt suddenly sick at heart. What had he expected? Hisoka to have a big revelation and turn into an empathic version of Watari?  
“Tatsumi’s wrong to hurt you, and you should get help,” Hisoka pressed the heel of his hand against the grass with each statement, as if he was trying to root his words in the ground. “But I know you think differently, and I know you two care about each other and...” he paused, then finally met Tsuzuki’s eyes. “I promise I’ll try to understand, if I can.”  
Tsuzuki did not know what to say. Instead he reached out and picked up one of Hisoka’s hands, moving slowly so that his partner could flinch away if he needed to. But Hisoka stayed still, and Tsuzuki held the hand lightly in his own, dimly sensing the intimacy of the connection this made to Hisoka’s empathy, but not pushing it, just offering up the mess of warmth and confusion in his heart.  
“Donuts are on me tomorrow,” he said cheerfully aloud. “I’ll get you something _really_ boring, I promise. Not a chocolate sprinkle in sight.”  
“Idiot,” said Hisoka with mild reproach, and they sat like that for a few more moments, until it was time for Tsuzuki to go.

~*~

Tatsumi remained in his own office until the stroke of the hour.   
It was perhaps ridiculous on a day when most of the rest of the staff seemed to have spontaneously proclaimed early closing and could be heard rustling and whispering curiously as they passed his office on their way home; but it was his custom to put in regular hours, even if he could not think clearly enough to use the time to full profit.   
So as not to be completely idle, and to fight off the temptation to go out there and yell at whoever was giggling at the edge of hearing, he took down the contents of three of his shelves and reordered them according to the new system he had been intending to implement for some time. Shifting hefty files was manual work: sufficient to slightly dissipate the tension inside him without significantly tiring him.  
He wanted to keep his energy, both mental and physical, for the evening.  
And yet he could not help going over and over the meeting with Konoe in his mind, though it had lasted bare minutes. The chief’s anger had not surprised him as such... in his boss’s place, Tatsumi would have felt the same, at least as far as the breakdown in discipline was concerned. But the intimate crassness had been something new.   
Seated rigidly upright in the uncomfortably low chair in front of Konoe’s desk, Tatsumi had barely begun his formal apology when Konoe interrupted him.  
“Tatsumi, it’s not my business if you bugger the _Gushoshin_ in your spare time. But you don’t bring it to work!”  
Tatsumi blinked. “It will not happen again, I give you my word,” he said stiffly. That sounded far weaker than he’d intended; the script that had been forming in his mind had seemed to slip out of focus as soon as the office door closed behind him.   
Konoe sighed, rubbing a hand across his face. “I’m not a fool. I know Enma likes to hire pretty young men. As Kurosaki-kun says, to some people these things are acceptable.”  
“But not to you.”  
Konoe looked away for a moment. “It’s an issue of civilised behaviour, Tatsumi. You haven’t used the slightest discretion – even for appearances’ sake, which is hardly like you.”  
“I apologise for the disruption,” Tatsumi reiterated. To that extent, he had to agree with his boss: he had no intention of repeating such an outburst on office time. “If you wish to discipline me in some appropriate way, I will accept it.”  
“Discipline you?” Konoe sounded surprised, then pulled a face, as if his own bewilderment was an off-colour joke. “You’re still the best damn worker in Meifu.”  
“I see,” responded Tatsumi icily. “Because of my professional competence you cannot afford to object to me beyond a certain point.”  
“Don’t play the damned martyr!” Konoe upbraided sharply, facing Tatsumi full-on once again. “Let’s get this absolutely clear. If what Kurosaki-kun says is true, buggery is the least of what you two got up to. And Tsuzuki’s mental health is hardly stable, you of all people should understand that. Do you honestly think you know what you’re doing?  
For a moment, Tatsumi simply stared at Konoe, taking in his heavy scowl, the lines on his forehead, and the genuine concern mixed with the anger in his eyes.  
“I have given you my word about my future conduct in the office,” he said eventually. “I will ensure Tsuzuki-san complies as well. Beyond that, the matter is not open for question.”  
Konoe sighed heavily, and shook his head. “Then I’ll see you tomorrow,” he said, turning his attention back to the documents spread in front of him.  
Tatsumi went back to his office to wait for the hour to sound.

~*~

Tsuzuki was sitting on a floor cushion in Tatsumi’s immaculate living room when the patch of shadow shimmered into view. In a few seconds the distorted blackness had dissipated, and there was the lean, elegant form of Tatsumi, looking from side to side then catching sight of Tsuzuki and starting towards him.  
They met as Tsuzuki made it to his feet, and Tatsumi pulled him into an embrace which was almost a death grip. Tsuzuki tried to relax into it, resting his head on the dark-jacketed shoulder, breathing in the familiar scent.  
“Talk to me?” he said quietly.  
Abruptly Tatsumi drew back. He took Tsuzuki tightly by the upper arms and stared into his face.   
“Never let me hurt you again, do you understand?” Tatsumi said in a low, almost choked voice. “You can turn me over to Touda first.”  
Frightened, Tsuzuki gazed back at the churning mix of emotion in Tatsumi’s normally impassive blue eyes.   
“You don’t mean physically, do you,” he murmured, and the words sounded stupid and obvious, but at least they broke the heavy spell of Tatsumi’s distress.  
“Let’s sit down,” Tsuzuki suggested, and to his relief, Tatsumi sank onto the cushion beside him. He crossed his legs, making something clink in his pocket, and leant his head back to press the top of his scalp against the wall at an uncomfortable-looking angle.   
Tatsumi stared fixedly up at the ceiling, and Tsuzuki longed to reach out to him, but an invisible barrier seemed to have sprung up between them.  
“I don’t trust myself with you,” Tatsumi said after a few moments, in a tone that was half-distant and half-pleading. “So why should it surprise me that nobody else does?”  
Tsuzuki’s hand itched to thread its way around Tatsumi’s shoulders, but he held back, biting his lip against the impulse. Tatsumi seemed vulnerable and shut off at the same time, the way he had earlier on, when he’d stood in the office window and talked about feeling responsible for Kyoto – taking everything on himself, like he always did, while Tsuzuki only thought about getting off.  
“I trust you,” said Tsuzuki, moving round onto his knees and touching Tatsumi’s arm in spite of himself. He never knew what to do when Tatsumi was suffering. Tatsumi would never admit to being upset, so usually Tsuzuki had a choice between ignoring it or letting it drive him mad.  
But they couldn’t go on like that. Tsuzuki knew it, and perhaps Tatsumi knew it too.  
“What did Konoe say?” Tsuzuki prompted very gently.  
Tatsumi swivelled his head around, still holding his crown against the wall, and his eyes were very wide and bright behind their frames. “Konoe-kacho believes you are mentally unstable, and I am endangering you,” he said almost calmly. “That appears to be a popular opinion.”  
Tsuzuki let one corner of his mouth quirk in rueful acknowledgement. “But you don’t believe that any more?”  
“No,” Tatsumi had to raise his head back to a normal position to shake it, and as he moved, some of the terrible tension seemed to drain out of him. “And I do not believe Konoe-kacho will interfere in our private business, provided we are discreet in the office in future. When I said you must not allow me to hurt you, you were right, I was not referring to physical pain. I meant that if you are happy, there are few people in Meifu who would truly grudge you the means of that happiness, however strange it may seem to them at first.”  
Tsuzuki nodded slowly, to show that he understood what Tatsumi was asking. “I’ll act so happy that everyone in the department gets a migraine,” he promised with a lopsided grin.  
“I want it to be more than an act,” Tatsumi reproached gently. “I want to make you as happy... as you’ve done for me.”   
He studied Tsuzuki intensely for a moment, and then his expression softened. Lifting Tsuzuki’s hand off his arm, he brought it to his lips. Delicately he kissed the little pad on the end of the forefinger, then took it between his teeth and bit down.  
“Ow,” protested Tsuzuki contentedly as Tatsumi regarded him slyly from half-lidded eyes.  
Tatsumi released the fingertip and kissed it again. Then he brought his left hand up, and twined his fingers with Tsuzuki’s. He tugged a little, then changed to pushing, and their joined hands danced in mid-air.   
“Well, it appears I have lost my mind entirely,” he observed wryly.  
A little bubble of joy broke free from Tsuzuki’s stomach and rose to his throat as he watched Tatsumi play with their hands.   
“I love you,” he said.  
Tatsumi’s arm froze mid-swing, and he looked up.   
“And I have always loved you,” he said quietly. “Whatever mistakes I’ve made, that has never changed for a moment.”   
“I promise I never forget about...” Tsuzuki started, then trailed off. It was hard to put this into words, but he had to for Tatsumi’s sake. “I know sometimes I’ve been cold to you too,” he admitted, feeling the guilty prickle of memories – the times he’d denied Tatsumi simple consideration just because Tatsumi couldn’t accept the whole package that Tsuzuki wanted to offer. “I was selfish. I was afraid of getting hurt. Because I knew if I let myself think about you like this again, I couldn’t bear to let go.”  
“Then don’t let go,” murmured Tatsumi. An arm snaked around Tsuzuki’s waist, and suddenly he found himself pulled around to land in Tatsumi’s lap.  
“I won’t,” whispered Tsuzuki as their faces came close together. Tatsumi’s hand began to play lightly downwards from his shoulder and he shivered a little, feeling his cock stirring into life. He brought his own hand up to cup the side of Tatsumi’s chin.  
“Mmm,” said Tatsumi thoughtfully, half-closing his eyes again. “Perhaps, to be absolutely sure of your good behaviour, I should tie you down.”  
Tsuzuki opened his mouth to reply, but he was cut off by a loud growling noise. Startled, he looked down – just as he realised the noise had come from his stomach.  
“Oops,” he said, then thought for a moment. “I don’t believe it – I actually forgot to eat lunch today. I just drank some tea. I’m sorry.”   
But Tatsumi only laughed, his eyes creasing with kindness as he gently disentangled himself from their embrace. “Tsuzuki-san, I’m flattered beyond measure by that admission. However, it is clearly now my duty to cook you dinner.”  
“That would be great,” Tsuzuki acknowledged, only half-concentrating.. Thinking back, the last thing he’d eaten had been a cookie that morning, with Hisoka, before… everything.  
“Tatsumi –” he said suddenly, shifting off Tatsumi’s lap to kneel on the cushion again. “I think Hisoka will come round eventually. He said he’d try.”  
“I believe you’re right,” said Tatsumi, drawing his legs up ready to stand, and smiling with his eyes. “This is unquestionably difficult for Kurosaki-kun, but he cares about you deeply. In certain ways, I suspect he understands you better than I do.”  
“Maybe,” conceded Tsuzuki. He felt distracted, his mind filled with memories of everything he and Hisoka had gone through, that day and before. “Tatsumi, don’t get me wrong,” he said then, getting to his feet and taking Tatsumi’s hand so that they stood up together. “Hisoka is my best friend,. But you… you would have let me die at Kyoto.”  
Tatsumi regarded him intently, letting his hand rest lightly inside Tsuzuki’s.  
“Yes,” he said simply. “At first, that was what I intended. It seemed to me that the decision was yours to make. Then I saw you react to Kurosaki-kun, and…” Tatsumi trailed off, shaking his head as pain clouded his eyes. “We have already spoken of this. Why do you bring it up now?”  
Tsuzuki smiled for a moment, until some of the strain had faded from Tatsumi’s expression, then he raised his lover’s hand to his lips, and kissed the back of it. “Because... I know I’m not an easy person sometimes. I needed to die then. Hisoka did change my mind, but the feeling was real, and you saw that. This time, I guess I need to live – but in a kind of weird way that’s typical for me, and…” Tsuzuki shrugged slightly, trying to keep his tone light so that his voice wouldn’t crack and embarrass Tatsumi. “Look at us. You’re here with me, idiot that I am.”  
“I would never try to change you,” responded Tatsumi, His expression did not alter, but there was such feeling in his eyes that it seemed to enfold Tsuzuki completely. “Keeping up with you may be a little more difficult,” he paused, and the slightest smile flickered across his face. “But change you? No.”   
“Then I’ll promise you this,” Tsuzuki murmured, giving up on his composure and throwing his arms around Tatsumi’s neck. “It won’t all be about me this time. I want to make you happy too.”   
They clung together for a few moments, and Tsuzuki could feel Tatsumi trembling slightly – from emotion or sex he didn’t know, and didn’t care, because it was all the same thing now. But inevitably Tsuzuki’s stomach went off again, and Tatsumi pulled back.  
“Insatiable,” he laughed, kissing the end of Tsuzuki’s nose.  
“In more ways than one,” Tsuzuki promised, licking Tatsumi’s chin. “Dinner won’t take long. I’ll help you with it.”  
Tsuzuki was slightly put out when Tatsumi raised his eyebrows.  
“All right,” Tatsumi conceded then. “If it’s inedible, I will just have to punish you.”

~*~

They ate kneeling at right angles to each other, Tsuzuki on one side of the small dining table and Tatsumi at its head. The dish was simple – leftover rice with vegetables – and quite edible, Tsuzuki having been relegated to chopping duties.  
Tatsumi ate calmly, trying to tune out distractions . He felt the need to slow down and reflect for a few minutes, and to his relief Tsuzuki seemed to understand and accept that.  
Not that he stood much chance of taking in the full enormity of everything that had happened today. Kurosaki... Konoe... there were obstacles to overcome, and he would put his mind to them in due course. For these few moments he would simply eat, and be at rest.  
But he couldn’t tune Tsuzuki out, not completely. He couldn’t help glancing up, just to reassure himself that Tsuzuki was truly here, in his apartment. And that brought on the other thoughts, the ones that were so very familiar but had changed utterly in tone, from dank and dreadful accusations lurking at the back of his mind, to a source of joyful anticipation.  
Tatsumi placed his chopsticks in his bowl, slipped a hand into his pocket, and felt there the metal binder clips which he had picked up from the office: a dozen of them, of varying size and strength. Inside his pocket, he snapped one of the clips against the others.  
“What’s that?” asked Tsuzuki on cue, pausing with food half way to his mouth. He glanced first at Tatsumi’s pocket and then his face. “It didn’t sound like keys.”  
“They aren’t,” said Tatsumi calmly. The way Tsuzuki looked at him flooded him with exhilaration; he felt utterly sure of himself now.  
But there was one last thing he needed to know.  
“Tsuzuki-san,” he said. “Please answer this question honestly – do you need me to beat you bloody every time?”  
Tsuzuki looked surprised for a moment, as if he had been expecting some other question. Then his expression changed to one of thoughtfulness, and finally a smile. “No,” he said with certainty. “Today was like... a kind of test, wasn’t it. I couldn’t take that very often, shinigami healing or not.”  
Tatsumi nodded slowly, feeling an unexpected relief, as if a final veil of pretence had fallen away before he’d even known it was there. “And I could not give it very often,” he admitted.  
“I guess that works out then,” said Tsuzuki. He regarded Tatsumi for a moment, then gathered more rice with his chopsticks – but Tatsumi reached over and grabbed his wrist.   
The chopsticks clattered to the table.  
“Dinner is over, Tsuzuki-san,” Tatsumi said. His cock stirred under the table as a flush crept into Tsuzuki’s cheeks and his beautiful amethyst eyes began to darken towards purple. “Get up,” he ordered, releasing his grip. “Go to the bedroom.”  
Tsuzuki’s eyes sparkled as he scrambled to obey, and Tatsumi followed, but more slowly. That afternoon, in his messy office, Tsuzuki had written the script for their encounter. Now though, they were on Tatsumi’s territory and, with a sudden fluttering in his stomach, he realised he would make the rules. Tsuzuki _wanted_ him to make the rules.  
At this time of day, his bedroom was filled with slanting sunlight. The light gleamed off the polished wood of the bedframe and the simple Japanese chest – and from Tsuzuki’s dark hair, as he knelt by the foot of the bed, head bowed.  
Tatsumi removed his jacket and tie and hung them on the back of the door. His hands wanted to tremble with haste, but he would not let them; not now.  
Instead he went to sit on the end of his bed. He twined a hand in Tsuzuki’s hair, pulling his head back, and Tsuzuki looked up at him, eyes wide and expectant.   
For one last moment, Tatsumi concentrated on something other than Tsuzuki. Shadows climbed the walls and seeped into every crevice.  
“Stand,” he said quietly, letting the hair slide from his fist.  
Tsuzuki obeyed. Tatsumi stood up with him, and slipped one hand between Tsuzuki’s shirt and the rim of his trousers. Nudging material aside, he felt the warmth of skin; the faint bulge of Tsuzuki’s hip bone, shading upwards to his waist.  
Pushing his thumb forward, Tatsumi played a little with Tsuzuki’s belly button, pinching the flesh with his thumbnail, making Tsuzuki draw breath and half-smile, his eyes darkening. Slowly Tatsumi unbuttoned his lover’s shirt, pulling it carefully free of his arms and folding it before he placed it on the nearby chest. Then he indicated that Tsuzuki was to turn around, and bound his hands behind him with his thin black tie.  
As Tatsumi eased Tsuzuki’s boxer shorts over his swelling cock, the head caught in the loose material. On impulse, Tatsumi pulled it roughly free – and Tsuzuki’s wrists twitched in their bonds, his eyes half-lidding as he let out a sudden hiss.   
That sound, rank with pain and arousal, made Tatsumi’s breath catch with desire.   
“That is only the beginning,” he growled.  
When the last of Tsuzuki’s clothes was dealt with, Tatsumi reached into his pocket and brought out the fistful of metal clips. He laid them on the small table beside the bed, and then looked side-on at Tsuzuki.  
Tsuzuki’s glance was flickering between Tatsumi and the clamps. With his hands imprisoned behind him, his chest rose and fell visibly, above the beautiful, lewd curve of his cock.  
“I should keep you bound and naked all the time,” said Tatsumi quietly. “Exposure suits you.”  
Their eyes met, and Tatsumi felt a deep thrill as a flush of pleasure rose into Tsuzuki’s cheeks.   
_Mine_ , he thought, almost in wonder.  
“You need a collar and leash in black leather to offset that lovely red,” he went on aloud, picking up two of the weaker clips and slipping them back into his trouser pocket. “And proper bindings, to keep you in place. I may buy them for you, if you please me.”  
“I’ll try, Tatsumi-sensei,” said Tsuzuki humbly.  
“You will also learn discipline,” Tatsumi told him. “Do you know how many times you have distracted me from my work? How many times I have wanted to chastise you right there in my office?”  
As he spoke, he regarded Tsuzuki severely, but when he glanced down to unbuckle his belt and slide it free, Tatsumi’s heart lurched in his throat. Was it really him saying all these things so calmly?  
Well, he had thought them often enough, if he was honest with himself, and now, with Tsuzuki’s excitement charging the air, they came to his tongue like exotic endearments.  
“I’m sorry, sensei,” Tsuzuki whispered.  
Slowly Tatsumi started forward, pulling the length of the belt through his free hand, enjoying the smooth hiss of its passage. He was acutely conscious of the aching of his own cock as Tsuzuki’s glance fixed on the belt and he swallowed visibly, fear flickering behind the desire in his eyes.  
“Stand still,” Tatsumi snapped. Tsuzuki obeyed, and again Tatsumi experienced the heady rush of power: this lovely creature was his to enjoy “No whipping tonight,” he continued in a more even tone, and he hung the belt over the bedrail. “There are other ways.”  
Reaching Tsuzuki but not touching him, Tatsumi paused for a moment and leant in towards his ear.  
“And you do remember the way to stop this?” he murmured gently, wanting to be absolutely sure this would go right.  
“Sakura,” said Tsuzuki, his breath caressing Tatsumi’s shoulder.  
“Yes,” said Tatsumi. “And if you cannot speak,” he added after a moment. “Click your fingers twice.”   
Then he wrapped his arms around his lover and pulled him in close. Tsuzuki’s torso already felt heated under his hands, and their cocks pressed together.  
Something hot and savage rose up inside Tatsumi. Gripping Tsuzuki as hard as he could, he sank his teeth into his lover’s cheek, growling deep in his throat. Tsuzuki panted and squirmed, but Tatsumi held him mercilessly, and in a few seconds he quietened, the tension not leaving his body but seeming to tune itself to the pain.  
Finally Tatsumi let go.  
“In this room, you belong to me,” he growled, drawing back and pushing up his glasses to watch the scarlet tracks of his bite as they rose and mottled Tsuzuki’s skin.   
“Yes, sensei,” said Tsuzuki meekly, though his eyes shone, startling purple above the startling red of his abused cheek. “I’ll try to be good.”  
Lightly, Tatsumi ran a nail up the underside of Tsuzuki’s cock, enjoying the little shiver of pleasure and frustration the action produced. “Then go and kneel on the bed,” he instructed. “And we will test that resolution.”  
Tsuzuki obeyed, and for a moment Tatsumi forced himself to turn his back. He collected Tsuzuki’s clothes from the table, stowed them more neatly in the wardrobe, and then began to undress himself. He was almost surprised to find he was doing this: there was a delicious frisson to being clothed while Tsuzuki was naked. But this time he wanted to be as close to Tsuzuki as possible.  
There was a muffled intake of breath from behind him as Tsuzuki realised what was happening. Tatsumi smiled slightly to himself and continued at his previous pace, neatly folding his trousers onto their hanger.   
As he removed his final layer of clothes, he touched himself, knowing Tsuzuki was watching. Perhaps once he would have been inhibited by the thought of such a thing. Once.  
When he finished and turned round, Tsuzuki was staring him up and down. His eyes were wide and almost unreadably dark as they met Tatsumi’s. With his arms still pinned behind his back he knelt up on the bed, swaying very slightly to keep his balance – all captured innocence, from head to waist. Below that, his cock thrust eagerly out towards Tatsumi, shameless and trusting.  
In spite of his resolution, Tatsumi was almost embarrassed. Not to be naked... but to be looked at that way. To be wanted so much and so openly. And he knew his own expression mirrored Tsuzuki’s, less crudely but no less completely than the arc of his erection matched its twin.   
Grasping his cock in his hand, he moved towards the bed.  
“Tsuzuki-san,” he said formally. Somehow, speaking that way gave him confidence.  
“Tatsumi-sensei,” Tsuzuki echoed, equally gravely. He sat back on his heels, looking up at his lover.  
Tatsumi carefully smoothed a place for himself and sat on the bed beside Tsuzuki. He cupped Tsuzuki’s balls in his free hand, tightening his fingers gradually.  
“You understand that you are to be severely disciplined?” he asked.  
“I’ll try to endure it as quietly as I can,” said Tsuzuki meekly, looking down at his imprisoned sac.  
“No,” said Tatsumi, a little more sharply than he had intended – the wrong kind of sharpness. “No,” he amended in a gentle, firm tone. He didn’t want Tsuzuki to feel restrained, not truly. “If I don’t see you suffering, how will I know the punishment is effective?”  
“Besides,” he murmured, and his voice became deeper, even slightly slurred, in spite of himself. “I like to hear you in pain. If you struggle, then I will hurt you more.”   
It shocked him a little, to hear himself say that. He had said similar things earlier, but in the heat of the hottest moment, and not to Tsuzuki’s face.   
But Tsuzuki did not look shocked. His eyes half-lidded, and a small moan escaped his throat as his head tipped slightly back.  
“Do it,” he whispered, looking down at the silver clip that Tatsumi held ready in his hand. “Please.”  
Tatsumi raised his legs onto the bed and moved round into a kneeling position, knees interlocking with Tsuzuki’s as he bore down on the smaller shinigami. Holding one of the clamps between thumb and forefinger, he ran the edge once, twice, three times across Tsuzuki’s right nipple before positioning it open over the little nub, and gradually allowing it to close.  
As the metal dug into his skin, Tsuzuki drew a long, ragged breath. He swayed a little to one side and back again, as if the pain was leaking over into motion, but Tatsumi anchored his shoulder with a firm hand, and snapped the other clip into place. This time Tsuzuki whimpered and lolled forward.  
“Look at me,” instructed Tatsumi gently. Tsuzuki raised his head, revealing the pale sweep of his chest with its two metal butterflies latched symmetrically in place, as if feeding.   
“How does that feel?” Tatsumi asked, studying Tsuzuki’s face, but even as he spoke the lines of pain seemed to shift, not fading but becoming tempered by a shaky, blissful, smile.  
“It hurts,” said Tsuzuki softly. “But gods, it’s good.”   
Tatsumi pulled him into an embrace, and for a long time they kissed, Tatsumi fisting his hands in Tsuzuki’s hair or reaching down to twist one of the clips and drink in the taste of pain and excitement as Tsuzuki’s numbing flesh awoke again to fire.   
Eventually Tatsumi pulled away, gently pushing Tsuzuki back as he tried to follow the kiss.  
“Sit still,” he scolded. “Be a good boy and wait.”  
Tsuzuki sat back on his heels, looking disappointed but obedient. He watched curiously as Tatsumi got off the bed and raided the bottom of the chest for some old ties, then came round behind him to undo his hands.  
“Now,” said Tatsumi, clasping Tsuzuki’s hand tightly against the small of his back for a moment, before setting them free. “On your back, Tsuzuki-san. Arms and legs out.”  
Tsuzuki hastened to reposition himself, his newly-released arms betraying him a little as he tried to move them too fast. Eventually he settled, and his eyes shone as he craned his neck to look towards Tatsumi, now standing at the foot of the bed.  
Tatsumi allowed his tongue to flicker between his lips at the sight of Tsuzuki so completely exposed. He let his eyes travel slowly from Tsuzuki’s spread legs, to the vulnerable nest of flesh at his groin, to his caged nipples and his lovely face. There, Tatsumi let his gaze rest while Tsuzuki slowly blushed redder and redder, his neck trembling with the effort of craning upwards, until his head dropped back onto the pillow.  
Only then did Tatsumi take an ankle in his hand, hefting it as if carelessly and beginning to wind it around with a tie.   
“You will accept the position I choose for you,” he informed Tsuzuki calmly.   
When both feet were fixed in place, Tatsumi stepped up to the head of the bed and picked up Tsuzuki’s left hand. Tsuzuki’s head rested motionless a few inches away, his eyes directed towards the ceiling, but Tatsumi could tell his other senses were focused on the one point of contact between them, the pressure of Tatsumi’s fingers as he adjusted and bound.  
The first hand secured, Tatsumi slowly walked around the bottom of the bed, watching Tsuzuki as he lay still, now almost completely restrained, breathing evenly with an expression of peace on his face. His nipples were whitened slivers of flesh in their metal cages, aureoles blooming dark around them.  
“Do you trust me?” Tatsumi asked. He picked up Tsuzuki’s free wrist, and ran a thumb over the thick discoloured ridges that marred the soft skin of the inside – traces of an anguish that had brought no compensatory joy. Never before had he so openly acknowledged the intimate marks where Tsuzuki’s past was etched into his body, but Tsuzuki showed no discomfort.  
“Yes, sensei,” he replied quietly, and Tatsumi raised the scars to his lips and kissed them, feeling a pulse jump under their blank smoothness.   
“Then you shall have what you deserve,” he promised, anchoring Tsuzuki’s last free limb with slow, firm twists. Tsuzuki smiled and let out a low moan as Tatsumi fastened the final knot, pulling gently on the ties as if to test them, and only succeeding in showing off his helplessness.  
“You will be writhing in earnest soon,” Tatsumi assured him, extracting a formal tie from the pile on the table. Sitting on the edge of the bed with one foot on the floor, he leant over to plant a kiss on the softening curve of Tsuzuki’s cock, then cradled it in his palm and began to wind the black cord around and around its base.   
Picking up a butterfly clip from the pile that now lay between them on the bed, Tatsumi pressed its curved side into the tender, crinkled flesh of Tsuzuki’s balls. At the cold metallic touch, Tsuzuki shuddered, craning his head up from the pillows and looking from Tatsumi’s hands to his face and back again. A small whimper escaped his mouth.  
Tatsumi studied him – the slight tremble of his head as he held it up from his pinned arms, the redness of his parted lips, the utterly unselfconscious longing in his eyes.  
 _I can make you fly like this._  
“Beg,” he said quietly.  
“Hurt me,” Tsuzuki pleaded. “Please, Tatsumi-sensei.”  
Smiling, Tatsumi released the spring of the clip. Tsuzuki let his head drop back onto the pillow, breathing deeply. When Tatsumi added another on the opposite side, he let out a thin whine; two more and a muscle in his thigh jumped, pulling helplessly at his pinned foot.  
“Good boy,” Tatsumi murmured, shifting position so that he was leaning over Tsuzuki’s upper body instead of his groin. “But I think you can take a lot more.”  
“Yes, sensei.” Tsuzuki made a visible effort to speak firmly, sliding his tongue over dry lips.  
Tatsumi kissed him, almost chastely, on the cheek, then ran a hand down to his chest and tweaked both butterfly clips from his nipples in quick succession. Tsuzuki exhaled in a short burst, drew the breath back in equally sharply, and after a few seconds’ delay began to laugh.  
“Doubtless Watari would have a scientific explanation for why you react to stimuli in such a fashion,” said Tatsumi, letting amusement and tenderness nudge aside the authority in his tone.  
“They’re endorphins, I think,” said Tsuzuki, smiling up at him a bit woozily.  
Tatsumi looked at him, and then at the little pile of clamps, and a sharp thrill of anticipation shot through the comfortable warmth that had filled him. His eyes had fallen on the six tight foldback clips: stiff, narrow triangles of coloured plastic that could be properly opened only with such great effort that they frequently shot out of his fingers when he used them at the office. He had once caught one on the tough webbing between his finger and thumb, and the pain had been enough to make him drop his papers and curse.  
He picked one up and raised it into view. Tsuzuki went very still, his eyes widening slightly as Tatsumi opened the little jaws of the clamp, controlling them with obvious difficulty.  
“I wonder how you will react to these,” said Tatsumi mock-casually, letting his hand move downwards. Tsuzuki was scared as well as excited, he could see that – just as he had been before the whipping, which had been more violent but perhaps less intimate than this.  
“I don’t know,” Tsuzuki replied simply, and as well as the fear in his voice there was a kind of receptive innocence that made Tatsumi’s heart constrict with desire.   
“You wanted this, didn’t you?” he demanded, bending over Tsuzuki’s face as he hovered the clamp over one reddened nipple. “You wanted to suffer.” He grasped Tsuzuki’s chin tightly, feeling the slight tremor of his nod.  
“Then suffer,” Tatsumi murmured. He ghosted a kiss across Tsuzuki’s lips, and the clip contracted into place.  
Tsuzuki screamed. He tried to pull his limbs in, but only managed to make the bedposts creak and scrape against the floor. After a moment he mastered himself, panting unevenly as he stared fixedly up at the ceiling. Tatsumi caressed him, moving rough and loving hands across his heaving chest, pinching his other nipple into a peak and then fitting the clamp. Tsuzuki screamed again, more hoarsely, the sound sputtering out into a high-pitched whine as he tossed his head from side to side.  
Tatsumi longed to crush his mouth against Tsuzuki’s and feed on that naked sound, but the torture was not complete. Picking up more clips he brushed them down the length of Tsuzuki’s cock to the soft, wrinkled skin of his balls. Convulsively Tsuzuki twitched away, but at the same time his shaft stood rigid, slight moisture beading at its end in spite of its bindings.  
“Come here,” Tatsumi barked, grabbing Tsuzuki’s cock and pumping it hard, the handful of clips caught between his palm and the tender flesh. Tsuzuki kept gasping, delicious pleading little sounds that made Tatsumi’s heart burn with the fierce delight of possession. But he forced himself to release his grip, and instead to gather up Tsuzuki’s scrotum and begin applying the relentless jaws of the clamps.  
Tsuzuki lost control.   
“No!” he cried, his whole body jerking to one side as the bed scraped against the floor. Tatsumi grabbed him roughly by the waist, pulled him back and delivered a stinging slap to his flank.   
“ _Yes_ ,” Tatsumi snarled, holding Tsuzuki down with one hand while the other fitted the final clamps. He climbed onto the bed and straddled the shuddering hips. “These are mine,” he said, reaching behind him to tug at Tsuzuki’s tortured balls. “And I will treat them as I wish.”  
Tatsumi twisted the clips between his fingers, and Tsuzuki’s face distorted with pain as he whimpered, his eyes roaming desperately around the room. But Tatsumi leant forwards, the rounded ends of the nipple clamps poking his chest in a wry echo of the agony they were inflicting on Tsuzuki, and shifted his weight to lie on top of his lover, grabbing a handful of hair and meeting his eyes.  
“Yes,” Tatsumi repeated in a much gentler tone.   
Tsuzuki stared up at him from bare inches away, eyes dark and wild and loving. He opened his mouth to speak, but the sound cracked into a groan.   
“...sei...” he managed, and a moment’s unexpected sadness rippled through Tatsumi; that to Tsuzuki he was _sensei_ even now; that perhaps, in the end, Tsuzuki loved this game more than the man he shared it with.  
“...chirou...” Tsuzuki finished, between gasps.   
At first Tatsumi did not understand the significance of the random syllables. And then he realised, as clearly and calmly as if he had spotted the solution to an accounting glitch: _that is my given name_.  
For a moment, Tatsumi’s movements slowed. He stroked a thumb across Tsuzuki’s sweaty forehead, loving him and willing him to understand all the things Tatsumi was not equipped to say in words. Tsuzuki whimpered, eyes fluttering half-shut at the gentle touch, and Tatsumi leant down to nuzzle his cheek.  
“Yes,” he breathed for a third time, hard against Tsuzuki’s skin. “And I’m going to break you now, Asato.”  
He drew back sharply, twisting his fistful of Tsuzuki’s hair, and revelled in the harshness of his movements and Tsuzuki’s helpless acquiescence as his head was jerked upwards. Cradling the back of his lover’s neck, Tatsumi brushed his lips over Tsuzuki’s face once, twice – and then took his mouth, plunging in with all the force he could muster. Tsuzuki moaned low in his throat and their tongues twined together, Tsuzuki’s battering at Tatsumi’s with a force that was almost but not quite strong enough to be resistance.   
Lowering Tsuzuki’s head without breaking their kiss, Tatsumi reached down and inserted his hand between their bodies. He lifted his groin and stroked himself first, taking his time though Tsuzuki went nearly frantic beneath him. Then he took pity, and undid the binding from Tsuzuki’s cock.   
They moved together, hard and fast. As Tatsumi felt himself approaching the edge he pulled away from their kiss, raising himself to take Tsuzuki’s balls in his hand. Crushing them with a violent love, he yanked off the clamps and worked upwards, his caresses passionate and harsh. Tsuzuki came in his hand, crying out words that were beyond meaning.  
With a clumsy lash of shadow, Tatsumi severed the ties that held Tsuzuki’s wrists. Slowly, jerkily, as movement returned, Tsuzuki raised his arms and fastened them around his lover’s shoulders. One final thrust between his own hand and the sated cock beneath him, and Tatsumi came in an explosion of pleasure that made the world tilt and ring.  
As he finally collapsed he felt he was falling _into_ Tsuzuki, and would never climb out again.

~*~

Tsuzuki stayed the night. Somehow it did not occur to either of them to question that he would, until they were already lying together in the darkness, sheets changed, bodies clean.   
“Tomorrow will be hard,” murmured Tsuzuki into Tatsumi’s hair. It was stupidly obvious, but he felt better for saying it.  
“I am concerned too,” admitted Tatsumi, squeezing his arm.   
And although their situation had not changed, it made things more bearable to know that Tatsumi felt the same way, and they would be able to stand together.

~*~

In the morning they kissed, Tatsumi’s alarm bleeping in the background because neither of them wanted to unclinch and attend to it. Tatsumi groped around to Tsuzuki’s ass and tried to give him a few sharp smacks – but his hand caught on the sheet, turning them into feeble taps, and he came up laughing.  
“Later,” he assured Tsuzuki meaningfully, reaching for his glasses and finally quelling the alarm.  
“Later,” Tsuzuki repeated like a vow.

~*~

On the way to the office, they visited Chijou so Tsuzuki could buy a bag of donuts. Afterwards, he stood outside the shop, counting his remaining coins.  
Grave-faced, Tatsumi reached into his pocket and added a binder clip to the pile.  
“To keep with you today,” he said.  
“I love you,” Tsuzuki replied.  
At 7.59am they walked up the steps of the JuoOhCho building, to face whatever might lie ahead.


End file.
